MY    HARVEST 


UNIV.  OF  CALIF.  TJR1UHY.  T.OS 


MY    HARVEST 


BY 

RICHARD     WHITEING 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  ISLAND,"  "NO.  5  JOHN  STREET" 
ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  fc*  COMPANY 

MCMXV 


Printed  in  Great  Britain 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

FAOB 

ATTE  BOWE 1 

CHAPTER  II 
SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS 17 

CHAPTER  III 

COLLEGE    .........      80 

CHAPTER    IV 
LITTLE  GRUB  STREET 45 

CHAPTER    V 
FLEET  STREET 59 

CHAPTER  VI 
PARIS  AGAIN 76 

» 
CHAPTER    VII 

INTERVIEWING 93 

CHAPTER    VIII 
SPAIN  IN  REVOLUTION  108 


2133752 


vi  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    IX 

PAGE 

PROVINCES  AND  METROPOLE        .....     123 


CHAPTER   X 
REPUBLICAN  FRANCE 135 

CHAPTER  XI 
KING  VICTOR  HUGO 147 

CHAPTER  XII 
A  RUSSIAN  REALIST 158 

CHAPTER   XIII 
PRUSSIANIZED  HISTORY 171 

CHAPTER   XIV 
THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY 188 

CHAPTER  XV 

AMERICA  IN  FACT  AND  FANCY    .  .         .         .     206 

CHAPTER   XVI 
FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN 221 

CHAPTER  XVII 

PEOPLE  AND  THINGS  .         .         .     238 


CONTENTS  vii 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

PAGE 

VICTORIAN  LONDON 254 

CHAPTER  XIX 

LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM     .         .         .         .         .268 

CHAPTER  XX 
CLUBS 288 

CHAPTER  XXI 
SALONS 297 

CHAPTER  XXII 
FAITHS  AND  UNFAITHS 304 

CHAPTER  XXIII 

THRESHING  OUT  .  817 


CHAPTER    I 

ATTE  BOWE 

T~  IFE  has  been  called  a  scene  of  adventure 
J-J  tempered  by  a  little  philosophy  on  the  way. 
It  is  not  exactly  my  view,  but  the  majority  incline 
to  it  as  the  only  one  that  reconciles  the  rule  of 
thumb  to  self-respect.  Hence,  I  suppose,  the 
fascination  of  pure  romance  in  The  Arabian 
Nights,  Gil  Bias,  Tom  Jones,  or  even  at  a  dis- 
tance from  these,  the  egregious  Roderick  Random 
with  the  due  subservience  of  its  hopes  of  im- 
mortality. The  earlier  romances  are  mostly  of 
this  cast ;  and  I  should  be  glad  to  get  the  benefit 
of  it,  if  only  I  could  plead  their  license  of  invention. 
Happily  the  adventure  being  sometimes  in  the 
nature  of  spiritual  experience,  does  not  always  in- 
volve shipwreck  and  the  shooting  of  lions.  But 
it  is  invariably  events  and  incidents  first,  and  the 
moral,  if  anywhere,  only  at  the  end  of  the 
journey.  The  old  masters  at  any  rate  usually 
began  with  a  birth  as  the  greatest  of  all  accidents, 
and  never  stopped  till  they  had  got  their  hero 
married  at  least,  and  not  seldom  comfortably 
entombed. 

I  was  born,  alas !  as  far  back  as  1840 ;  and  there 
is  still  so  much  to  see.  My  father  held  a  modest 
place  in  the  Inland  Revenue  Office  at  Somerset 


2  MY  HARVEST 

House.     He  was  of  a  stock  of  Yorkshire  farmers 
whose  tombstones  standing  to  this  day  under  the 
shadow    of   Beverley    minster — usually    bore    the 
word  "  yeoman  "  to  show  that  they  were  tillers  of 
their  own  land.     They  had  everything  proper  to 
their  rustic  state  including  a  family  Bible  dated 
1639,  and  still  extant.    My  sire  seems  to  have  been 
the  first  of  the  line  to  make  the  great  venture  of 
London — walking   all   the   way   and   carrying   his 
own  rations  to  keep  the  little  hoard  in  his  pocket 
intact.     My  mother — well,  if  I  had  the  genius  of 
Barrie,   she   should   have   a   book   all   to   herself. 
When  I  lost  her  fostering  care,  the  lonely  man 
was   lucky   enough   to   find   rooms   suited   to   his 
means  in  what  was  then  the  classic  land  of  the 
London   lodging  -  house,    Norfolk    Street,    Strand. 
The   fine   old   street   has   been   rebuilt :    it   is   all 
stately  offices  now ;    it  was  then  a  double  line  of 
Georgian  facades,  where  you  had  to  lodge,  if  you 
wanted  to  do  so  in  a  certain  style.     Hotels  were 
few,  and  most  of  them  dear  and  comfortless  with 
unpleasant  suggestions  of  the  public-house.     Mr. 
Spectator,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  rooms  in 
Norfolk  Street  as  far  back  as  the  reign  of  Queen 
Anne.     Peter  the   Great  once  stayed  there  ;   and 
since  then  the  place  had  had  time  to  rise  from  its 
Hanoverian   ashes   and   still   to   mellow   into   the 
beauty  of  age  in  which  I  knew  it  as  a  boy.     It 
sloped   towards   the   river,    without   meeting   the 
embrace ;    and  the  only  way  of  getting  out  of  it 
was  to  retrace  your  steps  to  their  starting  point  in 
the  Strand.    From  a  lofty  terrace,  its  railings  rusty 
with  years,  you  looked  down  on  Thames,  sweet  or 


ATTE  BOWE  3 

otherwise  as  the  case  might  be,  and  needing  no 
poetical  apostrophe  to  induce  it  to  take  its  course 
softly  to  the  sea.  There  was  usually  something  to 
look  at — a  Lord  Mayor's  procession,  a  boat  race, 
rowed  in  topper  hats,  an  old-fashioned  man  of 
business  on  his  way  to  the  City  in  a  boat  pulled  by 
a  nice  ruffianly  sort  of  waterman — on  gala  days 
perhaps  in  coat  and  badge.  And  where  these 
failed,  there  was  always,  moored  right  in  the  line 
of  the  street,  the  very  ship  in  which  Captain  Cook 
circumnavigated  the  globe,  picking  up  continents 
on  his  way.  It  was  now  a  floating  lock-up  for  the 
rascaldom  of  the  river — we  are  matchless  among 
the  nations  for  pleasantries  of  this  sort.  No  in- 
scription proclaimed  its  great  achievements  in 
every  clime,  no  flourish  of  trumpets,  nor  even  a 
bo'sun's  whistle  sounded  a  Whitmanian  salut  to 
the  seas  of  the  world  from  its  timbers  steeped  in 
their  brine.  For  most  of  us  who  gazed  it  was  a 
question,  not  of  what  feet  of  Argonautic  heroes  had 
once  trod  its  deck,  but  only  of  what  variety  of 
river  scum  had  taken  their  places. 

Within,  as  without,  the  old  street  was  all  beauty 
of  domestic  architecture,  with  a  suggestion  of 
retirement  and  of  perfect  peace.  There  were  four 
stories  to  the  houses,  counting  the  garrets,  cavern- 
ous subterranean  kitchens  importing  a  bridge  over 
the  well  in  which  they  lay,  and  beneath  these, 
regions  of  impenetrable  darkness  where  the  coal 
was  stored,  and  where  an  adventurous  infant  some- 
times went  to  look  for  ghosts  or  listen  for  rats  for 
the  fearful  joy  of  successful  flight.  The  back 
garden  of  my  own  particular  house  of  dream  had 


4  MY  HARVEST 

disappeared  save  for  one  big  surviving  tree  that 
threw  a  welcome  shade  over  the  whole  place  in 
summer  time.  In  the  winter  it  dripped  what  I 
must  still  call  cosy  desolation  over  a  clean  paved 
yard,  to  urge  you  indoors  for  the  comfort  of  a 
hobbed  fire-place  and  a  footstool.  This  yard,  with 
an  old  summer-house  to  keep  it  in  countenance, 
was  all  that  was  left  of  the  floral  associations  of  the 
past ;  but  its  type,  in  pictorial  presentation  for- 
ever, is  to  be  found  in  some  of  the  Dutch  works  at 
the  National  Gallery.  The  style  came  to  us  with 
William  of  Orange,  and  it  was  but  a  copy  of  a  copy 
in  the  Georgian  time.  The  rich  West  Indian  or 
American  planter  went  to  Norfolk  Street  for  all  he 
wanted  in  substantial  comfort  as  it  was  under- 
stood in  that  day — a  spacious  reception  room  over- 
looking the  street,  wherein  also  he  dined  at  four 
o'clock.  It  was  the  fashionable  hour,  as  it  gave 
him  time  to  sit  over  his  wine  before  starting  for 
the  theatres,  nearly  all  in  a  bunch  within  a  stone's 
throw,  or  for  the  wilder  dissipation  of  the  Cider 
Cellars,  with  Evans's  supper-room  to  follow  for 
the  wind  up.  The  wealthier  people  brought  a 
servant  or  two  with  them.  But  there  were  all 
sorts,  from  these  swells  of  the  drawing-room  to  the 
single  gentleman  class,  like  my  father,  who  had  but 
a  bedroom  to  his  name,  and  who  took  his  meals,  by 
arrangement,  with  the  landlord  and  housekeeper 
in  their  private  room.  The  perfect  suite  for  the 
nabobs  included  a  bedroom  leading  out  of  a  sitting- 
room,  and  beyond,  a  dressing-room  that  might 
hold  a  bed  at  a  pinch.  What  more  could  you 
have,  or  at  any  rate  what  more  did  you  get  in 


ATTE  BOWE  5 

that  age  ?  It  was  the  height  of  dignity  and  dash. 
They  took  your  orders  in  the  morning  for  the  meals 
of  the  day,  bought  the  provisions  in  accordance, 
cooked  them,  stored  the  remains  to  your  credit 
as  the  dishes  were  removed.  It  imported  much 
cold  mutton  for  customers  of  a  thrifty  class,  but 
the  remedy  was  at  hand  in  the  shape  of  a  whole 
shopful  of  pickles  and  sauces  in  the  neighbouring 
Strand. 

It  was  really  a  fine  thing  to  be  born  at  such  a 
time,  because  it  marked  the  opening  of  that 
Victorian  period  which  marks  a  most  significant 
parting  of  the  ways  of  English  social  life.  It  was 
all  so  delightfully  new  as  we  saw  it.  The  cry 
was  "  our  young  Queen  and  our  Old  Constitution," 
as  succeeding  the  shibboleths  of  the  immediately 
antecedent  William  and  the  Georges,  most  of 
whom  never  had  a  youth  of  hope.  We  were  all 
going  to  turn  over  a  new  leaf  and  be  good  under 
the  benignant  influence  of  a  virgin  monarch  to 
whom  any  sort  of  moral  imperfection  was  simply 
a  thing  unknown. 

But  I  couldn't  live  at  a  loose  end,  in  even  the 
best  of  lodging-houses.  There  was  my  education 
to  think  of.  I  was  rising  eight,  I  fancy,  ere  I 
attacked  but  the  second  of  the  three  R's.  I  could 
not  shape  a  pot-hook,  and  had  never  handled  a 
pen  except  to  break  it.  It  was  to  be  school,  and 
boarding  school  at  that ;  the  lonely  man  could 
think  of  nothing  better.  Behold  me  then,  not 
without  tears  from  the  housekeeper  and  the  maids, 
on  the  way,  under  parental  convoy,  to  Bromley -by- 
Bow,  then  just  out  of  range  of  the  London  smoke. 


6  MY  HARVEST 

I  had  given  no  tears  in  return,  being  full  of  pleasur- 
able delight  in  a  new  school  box,  mine,  and  its  new 
outfit.  All  had  contributed  something — the  old 
lodging-house  keeper  a  new  hat,  a  topper  in  real 
beaver,  as  they  wore  them  in  that  day.  How  the 
father  had  come  to  his  choice  of  an  academy  for 
young  gentlemen  I  know  not,  perhaps  by  adver- 
tisement, but  he  had  been  wisely  led.  Bromley- 
by-Bow  was  dotted  all  over  with  fine  old  buildings, 
and  one  of  them  was  a  palace  ancient  of  days. 
Mary  Stuart's  son,  James  the  First  of  England, 
and  the  Scottish  Sixth  had  come  south  to  unite 
the  warring  crowns,  and  being  fond  of  hunting  he 
had  begun  in  a  kingly  way  by  making  a  sylvan 
solitude  for  himself  with  its  starting  point  at 
Bromley,  and  calling  it  a  chase.  Bromley  was 
then  a  lovely  village,  and  it  remained  so  to  the  time 
of  my  first  acquaintance  with  it.  The  old  palace, 
the  private  school  to  which  I  was  taken,  was 
the  loveliest  thing  in  it,  not  of  course  in  conscious 
realization  to  me,  but  simply  in  beauty  of  illusive 
suggestion — all  I  wanted  at  that  age,  perhaps  all 
one  wants  at  any.  Imagine  then  the  old  gabled 
building  all  wainscot  down  to  its  meanest  rooms, 
and  in  its  great  hall  a  glory  of  rich  carving, 
arabesqued  ceiling,  and  fire-places  as  elaborate 
to  scale  as  a  cathedral  porch.  It  stood  in  its  own 
grounds,  and  nothing  ugly  was  there,  or  mean, 
within  sight  or  sound  of  it.  The  playground  was 
a  clearing  in  the  forest  with  still  many  of  the 
oldest  trees  in  their  place.  The  light  that  never 
was  on  sea  or  shore  was  to  be  identified  at  last 
between  them  and  the  skies  in  a  chiaroscuro  of 


ATTE  BOWE  7 

sunshine  seen  through  the  leafage  of  spring.  The 
schoolmaster's  walled  garden  was  of  the  peace 
that  passeth  understanding,  with  a  mulberry  tree 
in  the  garden  that  was  our  tree  of  life  too  when 
it  yielded  pie  as  an  extra  on  days  of  festival. 
Beyond  our  bounds  it  was  all  loveliness  still — on 
the  one  side  an  orchard  where  an  old-fashioned 
farmer  raised  fruit  for  the  London  market,  on 
others  the  plough  land  where  he  raised  corn.  He 
was  no  doubt  unfortunate  in  his  neighbours  of 
the  orchard  boundary,  but  what  he  lost  in  that 
respect  was  our  gain.  For,  according  to  all  the 
rules,  a  boy's  education  ought  to  include  the 
pilfering  of  apples  as  a  preparation  for  the  adven- 
turous work  of  life.  From  them  the  hero  proceeds 
to  islands,  and  to  empires  later  on.  The  practice 
has  grown  into  disuse  in  our  day,  but  the  girl 
queen  was  as  keen  for  it  as  any  of  her  predecessors. 
An  orchard  to  rob,  and  no  questions  asked,  would 
be  a  positive  recommendation  for  a  seat  of  learning 
in  our  spiritless  time.  Nothing  ugly,  I  said,  or 
mean  anywhere  within  reach  of  us.  For,  again 
beyond  bounds,  it  was  but  the  old  Seven  Stars 
Inn  gabled  and  wainscotted  like  the  rest,  or  a  tuck- 
shop  with  bull's-eyed  window-panes  that  played 
fantastic  tricks  in  optics  with  the  items  of  the 
stock. 

And  then  for  the  dignity  of  age  in  the  associa- 
tions, if  we  had  either  known  or  cared,  think  of 
the  neighbouring  church  to  which  we  were  marched 
for  the  Sunday  services.  The  very  hunting  lodge 
was  nothing  to  it  in  that  respect.  For  here  we  were 
on  the  site  of  Chaucer's  convent-church  "  scole  of 


8  MY  HARVEST 

Stratford  atte  Bowe,"  not  to  be  confounded  with 
the  other  Bow  church,  but  a  bowshot  from  it,  in 
the  main  road — a  first  offence  in  punning  that  shall 
also  be  the  last.  Still  less  to  be  confounded  with 
the  one  in  Cheapside.  Everybody  goes  to  these, 
guide-book  in  hand,  few  carry  the  pilgrimage  as 
far  as  my  old  church — mine  and  Chaucer's,  in 
regard  to  the  identity  of  the  sites.  I  am  right 
glad  of  it.  I  give  it  away  in  writing  indeed — for 
how  resist  the  temptation  ?  and  yet  inconsistently 
I  want  its  memories  all  to  myself.  The  convent 
was  venerable  for  its  antiquity  even  when  Chaucer 
knew  it  as  part  of  a  Benedictine  nunnery  founded 
by  the  Conqueror.  The  present  church  now  calls 
itself  St.  Leonard's,  after  the  name  of  its  parish; 
but  St.  Mary's  it  was,  and  should  be,  for  all  time. 
Fragments  of  the  old  building  were  walled  into  the 
new  one  when  it  was  rebuilt  in  1842 — perhaps  as 
we  now  lace  concrete  with  steel  to  make  it  last 
to  the  crack  of  doom — among  them  a  slab  of  Pur- 
beck  that  marks  the  resting-place  of  a  knight  and 
his  wife  buried  there  in  1336.  Witness,  too,  another 
really  exhilarating  tombstone  of  a  later  date. 

As  nurses  striue 

theire  Babes  in  bed  to  lay 

When  they  too  ly-berally 

the  wantons  play 

So  to  preuente 

his  farther  growinge  crimes, 

Nature  his  nurse 

gott  him  to  bed  betimes. 

For  nigh  eight  hundred  years  end  on  end  they 
have  closed  evening  service  on  that  spot  with 
"  Lighten  our  darkness,"  either  in  the  English 


ATTE  BOWE  9 

liturgy  or  in  the  Roman  original.  With  its  cadences, 
said  or  sung,  and  worthy  alike  of  the  end  of  a  day 
or  the  end  of  a  life,  it  was,  I  think,  about  the  first 
bit  of  "  established  "  religion  that  got  fairly  into 
my  soul. 

I  don't  mean  to  say  we  were  fully  sense-con- 
scious of  all  this  delicate  perfume  of  time  in  church 
and  school,  but  still  something  of  it  was  there. 
More  might  have  been  found  in  the  former  case, 
if  they  had  not  contrived  to  associate  the  morning 
services  with  a  fine  of  pudding  for  the  offence  of 
going  to  sleep  during  sermon — and,  worse  luck, 
Sunday  was  the  only  pudding  day.  A  wretched 
usher  surveyed  all  the  file  for  this  lapse,  which  I 
daresay  he  was  only  prevented  from  repeating  by 
having  to  make  a  note  of  the  names.  These  were 
called  over  after  the  joint,  and  their  owners  had 
to  rise  and  march  out.  The  bigger  boys  pretended 
that  it  had  its  compensations,  as,  once  outside, 
you  might  swear  without  risk  of  detection.  All, 
I  think,  would  have  preferred  the  chance  of  the 
pudding. 

Our  "  Head  "  was  the  mildest  mannered  Church 
of  England  parson  that  ever  ruled  an  urchin  mob. 
His  name  was  Stammers,  and  he  bought  the  school 
of  the  widow  of  a  Mr.  Safe,  who,  to  this  day,  has 
his  tombstone  near  the  door  of  the  church.  He  is  in 
good  company  of  celebrities  dead,  gone  and  forgotten 
— worshipful  citizens  whose  worship  ended  with 
their  lives,  a  sprinkling  of  Huguenot  exiles,  and  no 
doubt  many  a  golden  lad  and  girl  long  since  gone 
to  dust,  with  the  local  chimney-sweeper.  Some  of 
the  tombs  have  been  shifted,  but  on  the  whole  the 


10  MY  HARVEST 

old  place  is  pretty  much  as  it  was  in  my  time. 
Mr.  Safe  was  a  stern  disciplinarian.  Mr.  Stammers 
was  of  quite  different  stuff.  He,  and  his  maiden 
sister  to  match,  were  all  beaming  benevolence  and 
goodness  of  heart.  I  doubt  if  ever  he  laid  violent 
hands  on  any  fellow-creature  in  his  life.  On  taking 
charge,  he  publicly  proclaimed  from  his  desk  that 
he  had  the  strongest  objection  to  flogging,  not,  as 
he  assured  us,  on  humanitarian  grounds,  but  only 
because  he  was  naturally  of  a  nature  so  ferocious 
that  he  shrank  from  the  very  thought  of  the  con- 
sequences to  the  offenders.  It  was  understood 
that  his  blows  would  be  death  or  maiming  for  life, 
and  he  implored  us  for  our  sakes,  and  his  own, 
never  to  put  him  to  the  proof.  We  had  only  to  be 
reasonable  in  misdoing  to  be  sure  of  every  con- 
sideration for  our  persons,  and  meanwhile  he 
would  be  content  to  chasten  by  impositions.  We 
were  much  impressed,  myself  in  particular,  yet  it 
fell  out  that  I  was  the  first  to  put  myself  beyond 
the  means  of  grace.  I  had  wantonly  launched  a 
speculative  stone,  in  the  nature  of  a  bolt  from  the 
blue,  through  the  window  at  which  he  and  his 
sister  sat  at  tea.  He  harangued  us  on  the  incident 
to  the  effect  that  he  had  to  draw  the  line  at  utter 
depravity,  and  he  gloomily  ordered  me  to  follow 
him  to  his  room.  I  did  so  with  the  feeling  that 
I  was  making  premature  acquaintance  with  the 
end  of  all  things,  and  my  sobs  rent  the  air.  Yet 
these  were  nothing  to  my  roar  as  the  cane  fell  on 
my  shoulders  from  a  dizzy  height  that  threatened 
annihilation.  I  am  bound  to  say  I  was  agreeably 
disappointed  in  the  result.  It  was  what  I  after- 


ATTE    BOWE  11 

wards  learned  to  recognize  as  a  stage  blow,  and 
it  fell  with  almost  the  softness  of  a  caress.  It 
was  the  same  with  the  few  that  followed,  though 
I  roared  on  by  way  of  payment  in  advance  for 
what  was  sure  to  come.  In  fact  nothing  hap- 
pened, not  even  a  cloud  of  dust  from  my  jacket. 
The  dear  old  chap  ! 

But  we  were  soon  to  be  stirred  by  fiercer  excite- 
ments, almost  imperial  in  their  scope.  Suddenly 
London  began  to  loom  large  on  the  sight  of  our 
sylvan  retreat.  It  was  the  year  of  the  Chartist 
rising  of  the  '48.  What  a  year  !  It  thrilled  all 
Europe  with  terror  and  wrath.  It  gave  the  im- 
pulse that  peopled  America  :  the  great  emigration 
set  in  with — "  To  the  West,  to  the  West,  to  the 
Land  of  the  Free,"  sung  under  the  silent  stars 
specially  benignant  in  their  watch  over  the  boats 
that  carried  the  hungry  horde.  And  what  a  day 
of  all  its  days  when  the  Chartists  called  their 
meeting  at  Kennington  Common.  Kennington 
was  then  to  London  proper  what  Brooklyn  was 
to  New  York,  a  sort  of  glorified  village  "on  the 
other  side  of  the  water "  where  old-fashioned 
people  led  leisurely  lives.  The  London  mob  was 
to  march  there  for  a  great  demonstration  in  further- 
ance of  the  demand  for  a  charter  of  popular  rights. 
Anything  might  happen  on  their  return,  primed 
with  oratory,  desperate  with  the  sense  of  wrong, 
wild  with  the  sense  of  opportunity  in  a  luxurious 
capital  lying  at  their  mercy.  That  was  all  we 
knew  about  it  in  forecast,  and  most  of  our  betters, 
the  grown-ups  who  formed  public  opinion,  were 
in  the  same  plight  of  invincible  ignorance.  It 


12  MY  HARVEST 

was  a  lurid  programme.  "Mein  Gott,  vat  a  city 
for  to  pillage,"  said  old  Blucher,  when  he  drove 
through  the  London  streets  after  the  peace  of 
1814. 

So  on  the  great  day  we  had  our  special  messenger 
to  the  capital  to  examine  and  report.  The  dear 
old  Head,  self-chosen,  was  naturally  the  man.  He 
set  off  in  the  morning  as  to  an  heroic  adventure, 
and  with  us,  of  course,  sleep  was  out  of  the  question 
till  his  return.  We  discussed  his  mission  in  the 
dormitories,  squatting  on  the  beds  in  our  night 
gear,  not  unlike  Indians  round  the  camp  fire. 
Our  room,  and  every  other  I  daresay,  had  its 
tactician  and  its  politician,  as  leaders  of  the  pow- 
wow. The  politician  was  severe  on  the  rabble — 
boys  are  mostly  born  snobs — and  he  made  the 
running  for  the  tactician  who  undertook  to  show 
how  they  were  to  be  massacred  to  a  man.  The 
Duke  of  Wellington,  "  conqueror  of  Napoleon," 
was  in  command  of  the  troops,  and  our  military 
adviser,  being  apparently  deep  in  his  counsels, 
assured  us  that  he  knew  his  plan.  The  insurgents 
were  to  be  prevented  from  getting  to  Kennington 
at  all  costs,  and  to  find  themselves  penned  in  their 
tracks  by  horse,  foot,  and  artillery,  and  reduced 
to  mincemeat.  Mincemeat  it  had  to  be  :  nothing 
less  would  content  us.  In  imagination  we  listened 
like  the  dwellers  in  sacked  cities  seen  in  dreams, 
breathless,  cowering  behind  closed  doors  for  the 
first  shrieks  of  death.  Yet  we  would  not  have 
foregone  those  shrieks  for  all  the  world.  We 
wanted  our  thrill.  Imagine  our  disgust  then  when 
we  had  to  learn  from  the  home-coming  parson  that 


ATTE  BOWE  13 

there  had  been  nothing  of  the  sort.  The  Duke 
seemed  to  have  entirely  missed  his  opportunity. 
He  allowed  the  enemy  a  free  crossing  to  the  side 
of  the  river  where  there  was  no  mischief  to  be 
done,  but  when  they  came  back  at  night,  angry, 
hungry,  footsore,  they  found  the  bridges  barred 
and  the  sullen  cannon  between  them  and  the 
palaces,  public  offices,  banks,  and  what  was  still 
more  of  a  hardship  for  the  poor  creatures,  their 
miserable  homes.  They  were  filtered  over  in 
detachments  at  last,  and  kept  on  the  run  till  they 
reached  their  hovels  dead  beat,  and  the  day  of 
doom  ended  in  their  utter  discomfiture  without 
the  firing  of  a  shot.  The  dear  old  Head  called  it 
a  greater  victory  than  Waterloo,  and  suggested 
prayers  for  the  merciful  victor.  He  had  them  all 
to  himself. 

It  was  impossible  to  quiet  down  after  such 
excitements.  There  was  a  fight  in  our  dormitory 
next  morning,  what  about  I  forget.  The  principals 
were  a  leading  politician  and  your  humble  servant, 
both  in  nightgowns — such  was  our  ardour  for  the 
fray.  I  won — by  a  fluke,  and  I  make  no  boast 
of  it.  In  one  of  those  wrestles  for  the  fall,  then 
fashionable  in  contests  of  this  sort,  my  oppo- 
nent's head  struck  the  floor.  The  hollowness  of 
the  sound  seemed  to  preclude  all  possible  danger 
of  concussion,  but  he  gave  in.  I  don't  know  why, 
but  something  prompted  me  to  kiss  him.  My 
second  frowned. 

"  Stash  it,  little  'un  ;  that  sort  of  thing  isn't 
done  here." 

The  victim  himself  seemed  to  submit  to  it  only 


14  MY  HARVEST 

as  he  might  have  submitted  to  a  poultice.    It  was 
my  first  anti-climax  and  I  took  it  to  heart. 

In  due  course  I  heard  from  my  father  how  the 
day  had  passed  with  him.  As  a  Government 
officer,  he  was,  so  to  speak,  pressed  for  the  service 
of  the  special  constabulary.  It  was  a  Falstaffian 
army,  though  in  broadcloth  instead  of  rag-tag  and 
bobtail,  and  everybody  who  had  a  character  or  a 
position  to  lose  was  expected  to  join.  The  Govern- 
ment issued  truncheons  and  a  badge  for  the  arm ; 
old  soldiers  improvised  a  rough  drill.  Somerset 
House  was  guarded  by  these  old  employees,  mostly 
the  cankers  of  a  long  peace,  men  who  had  never 
struck  a  blow  in  anger  since  they  left  the  play- 
ground. They  were  useful  no  doubt  as  a  moral 
example,  but  they  would  probably  have  been  a 
terror  to  their  own  side  if  it  had  come  to  the  touch. 
Cowardice  had  nothing  to  do  with  it ;  it  was 
simply  the  lack  of  the  habit  of  strife.  Their  office 
was  now  their  guard-room,  and  they  roystered 
there  in  true  military  style.  A  generous  adminis- 
tration supplied  provender  and  moderate  pota- 
tions, and  here  and  there  a  blade  who  felt  he  had 
missed  his  vocation  rollicked  in  a  song,  "  A  soldier's 
a  man ;  a  life's  but  a  span ;  why,  then,  let  a 
soldier  drink."  As  a  variant,  yet  still  on  a  military 
motive,  another  gave  "  The  Banks  of  Allan  Water." 
Though  an  officer  of  the  department,  this  one  had 
been  excused  from  attendance  because  he  was  a  dwarf, 
but  he  had  insisted  on  remaining,  with  the  result  that 
my  father  never  forgot  this  song.  He  said  that  it 
was  the  most  beautiful  thing  he  had  ever  heard,  and 
he  bought  it  in  broad  sheet,  as  they  sold  songs 


ATTE  BOWE  15 

at  that  time,  for  his  delectation  in  old  age.  He 
had  many  projects  for  the  period  of  his  retirement 
from  the  service  :  one  was  to  learn  to  smoke. 

I  think  he  shed  tears  over  the  song,  though  he 
would  never  own  to  that.  He  had  the  English 
horror  of  the  display  of  emotion.  In  the  gravest 
event  of  his  life,  I  saw  him  giving  way,  not  at  the 
eyes,  but  only  at  the  chin.  The  latter  was  crumpled 
up  in  corrugated  folds,  and  seemed  to  shrink  for 
shelter  within  his  ample  stock,  saving  his  face  in 
the  upper  part,  and  hiding  its  loss  in  the  rest.  But 
he  was  tender  in  his  own  way  on  visiting  days. 
Perhaps,  as  to  demonstrations,  he  was  a  little 
checked  by  the  majesty  of  the  surroundings. 
Such  meetings  took  place  in  the  state  room  of  the 
old  palace,  parent  and  child  sitting  by  a  fireless  fire- 
place, cavernous,  vast,  as  measured  by  the  propor- 
tions of  a  small  boy.  They  talked  only  as  freely 
as  they  dared,  with  a  surmounting  Royal  Arms — 
as  one  might  say  life-size  over  the  mantel  to  keep 
them  on  their  good  behaviour.  Once,  when  he 
thought  nobody  was  looking,  he  took  me  on  his 
knee.  But  he  soon  set  me  down  again — perhaps 
as  having  caught  the  eye  of  the  unicorn. 

I  sometimes  go  to  look  at  the  fire-place  now,  not 
in  situ  in  its  palace,  but  at  South  Kensington 
Museum,  where  fragments  of  it  were  providentially 
intercepted  on  their  way  to  the  house-breaker's 
yard.  Years  and  years  after  I  first  knew  it,  the  old 
place  had  to  die  the  death  to  make  way  for  a 
highly  developed  slum,  with  rows  of  mean  houses 
effacing  the  glorious  playground  and  the  orchards, 
and  in  their  midst  a  barrack-like  School  Board 


16  MY  HARVEST 

building  to  make  weak  amends.  The  details  of 
desecration  were  shocking,  but  the  County  Council 
was  able  to  save  something  at  the  eleventh  hour, 
and  to  preserve  the  memory  of  the  rest  in  a  mono- 
graph on  "  The  Parish  of  Bromley-by-Bow,"  with 
which  I  have  but  one  fault  to  find,  that  it  is  not 
printed  in  letters  of  gold. 

As  I  stand  by  the  old  fire-place  in  the  public 
museum,  I  seem  to  be  once  more  in  that  dim 
Victorian  abysm  of  time.  Then  in  a  leap  I  am 
back  in  fancy  to  a  still  earlier  day,  with  Mary 
Stuart's  son — and  perhaps  Steenie  and  Baby 
Charles  to  keep  him  company — slobbering  his 
hunting  jokes  at  the  feast  that  followed  the  death 
of  the  stag  and  the  curee  in  the  courtyard,  with 
all  the  Georgian  ages  and  their  festivals  between. 
To  think  of  that,  and  then  of  M.  Bergson's  placid 
assurance  that  there  are  no  yesterdays  and  no  to- 
morrows, but  only  one  river  of  Now  in  everlasting 
torrent — pa-ta-tra  ! 


CHAPTER    II 

SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS 

BUT  presently  I  was  taken  from  the  old  school. 
Somebody,  perhaps  a  nebulous  aunt  in  far- 
away Yorkshire,  had  given  my  father  a  good 
talking  to  on  the  subject  of  my  need  of  "  mother- 
ing." Truth  to  tell  I  was  a  bit  too  young  to  be 
without  a  woman's  care,  for  the  change  came 
shortly  after  the  '48.  Behold  me  then  transferred 
to  St.  John's  Wood,  to  the  house  of  an  old  sailor, 
retired  on  his  laurels  as  an  ex-Navy  man,  and  on 
his  savings  as  a  jerry-builder  after  his  discharge. 
His  wife  was  warranted  capable  of  the  mothering, 
though  the  couple  had  no  children  of  their  own. 
I  was  a  sort  of  plaything  for  them,  and  they  made 
much  of  me,  insisting  on  my  calling  them  '  father  ' 
and  '  mother,'  and  generally  getting  all  the  benefit 
of  having  young  life  in  the  house.  They  were 
nearing  their  sixties.  The  old  man  was  one  of 
few  words,  but  I  think  he  liked  to  have  me  near 
him,  pulling  his  things  about,  and  generally  giving 
him  the  excuse  for  administering  what  he  called 
the  rope's  end,  in  the  shape  of  a  cuff.  He  was  a 
product  of  the  old  press-gang  system.  The  gang 
had  swept  down  on  him  one  fine  day  when  he 
was  leaving  his  work  as  a  bricklayer,  and  carried 
him  aboard  a  man-of-war  to  go  and  fight  the 
o  17 


18  MY  HARVEST 

Americans  in  the  war  of  1812.  It  was  astonishing 
how  little  he  had  to  say  about  that  contest,  or 
anything  else  in  life.  He  was  one  of  the  taciturn 
sort,  and  was,  moreover,  afflicted  with  asthma, 
which  is  a  great  promoter  of  that  frame  of  mind. 
I  have  sometimes  wondered  whether  he  knew  what 
the  war  was  about.  He  made  no  boast  of  his 
share  in  it,  he  said  nothing  depreciatory  of  the 
enemy  :  he  just  grunted  "  takin'  o'  Washington 
in  America,  1814,"  and  left  it  there.  On  the  rare 
occasions  on  which  he  took  a  drop  too  much — 
once  a  quarter  or  so,  when  he  broke  out  for  a  day — 
he  was  more  expansive.  But  it  was  not  in  the 
Pindaric  vein.  He  loved  ditties  of  sentiment 
— "  On  the  Banks  of  the  Shannon  when  Sheila  was 
nigh,"  such  is  my  perhaps  poor  recollection  of  the 
opening  line.  His  wife,  who  could  be  tuneful 
without  the  aid  of  stimulants,  sang  "  Arms  and 
the  Man,"  to  the  theme  of  General  Wolfe  and  his 
glorious  death  at  the  taking  of  Quebec.  She  was 
aware  of  it  as  a  real  live  issue,  having  learned  it, 
and  little  else,  of  her  mother  who  lived  to  a  great 
age.  Between  them  I  got  my  first  notions  of  the 
epic  theme  of  history.  Meantime,  as  I  gradually 
improved  in  my  reading,  I  picked  up  anything 
that  came  in  my  way,  among  the  rest  notably 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  when  it  reached  us  in  England 
— I  think  in  1852.  So,  after  a  fashion,  I  became 
aware  of  some  of  the  most  decisive  events  in 
American  story,  ranging  from  Montcalm  to  Mrs. 
Stowe  as  the  precursor  of  the  great  Civil  War. 

I  have  often  thought  how  little  in  this  way  would 
serve  to  carry  us  back  to  the  remoter  past.    If  we 


SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS       19 

imagine  a  succession  of  ancestors  of  ninety  giving 
their  recollections  to  infants  of  eight,  who  passed 
them  on,  with  the  accretions  of  experience,  at  the 
same  advanced  age,  we  should  soon  have  a  human 
chain  of  very  few  links  to  the  latest  events  of  our 
own  time.  I  am  too  lazy  to  work  it  out,  but  ten,  or  at 
most  eleven,  of  these  oral  chroniclers  should  bring 
us  right  back  to  Senlac  and  Norman  William,  with 
his  all-compelling  mace  that  gave  the  Saxon 
peasant  a  sort  of  hereditary  headache  in  presence 
of  his  superiors,  from  which  he  suffers  to  this 
very  day.  The  written  chroniclers,  with  their 
huge  superfluity  of  detail,  give  an  impression  of 
distance  which  is  wholly  illusory :  a  garrulous 
grandfather  or  two  would  soon  carry  us  back  to 
the  Mayflower. 

St.  John's  Wood  at  that  time  was  a  village  under 
the  lee  of  London,  very  much  like  the  Bromley-by- 
Bow  which  I  had  left.  It  had  and  has  the  dis- 
tinction of  being  our  first  garden  city  of  the  modern 
variety  made  on  a  scheme  of  town-planning  to  a 
definite  end.  Its  rise  synchronized  with  the  period 
at  which  the  prosperous  London  tradesman  ceased 
to  live  over  the  shop  of  which  his  family,  at  least, 
had  grown  ashamed.  The  new  settlement  had  of 
course  to  be  within  an  easy  drive  of  town.  His 
chariot,  or  the  stage  coach,  took  him  to  business 
in  the  morning,  and  brought  him  back  at  night  to 
his  villa  and  his  wife  and  daughters — the  latter 
a  distinct  part  of  his  state  as  including  the  harp 
among  their  accomplishments.  On  Sundays,  some- 
what later  on,  he  went  to  worship  at  St.  John's 
Wood  Chapel,  and  listened  to  an  evangelical 


20  MY  HARVEST 

preacher  in  a  Geneva  gown.  His  gardens  perhaps 
sloped  down  to  the  new  canal — the  "  Regent's 
Canal  "  to  this  day,  to  help  fix  the  date.  Or  if 
he  was  for  more  style,  it  was  at  hand  in  the  range 
of  mansions  which  Nash  and  others  were  building 
all  round  the  brand  new  Regent's  Park.  For  all 
we  now  say  against  it,  there  has  been  no  bolder 
attempt  to  make  London  a  second  Rome  of  Augus- 
tus if  only  in  stucco.  They  had  a  great  sense  of 
vista,  and  they  gave  us  our  great  palatial  terraces, 
York,  Chester,  Cornwall,  and  what  not,  wherein 
the  detail  of  individual  ownership  is  lost  in  the 
imposing  mass  of  the  general  plan.  The  effect  for 
the  beholder,  especially  for  the  foreigner,  was  that 
Caesar  or  his  modern  equivalent,  had  one  terrace 
all  to  himself  and  Maecenas  another.  In  St.  John's 
Wood  there  was  more  of  the  personal  touch,  but 
the  general  character  was  the  same.  One  villa, 
nestling  among  the  surviving  trees  of  the  forest 
out  of  which  the  whole  district  was  hewn,  was  the 
Horace  of  the  translators,  in  the  smug  retirement 
of  stage  rocks,  running  rills,  and  willows  weeping 
their  genial  sorrows  into  glassy  pools.  The  great 
peace  that  followed  the  downfall  of  Napoleon  is 
commemorated  to  this  hour  in  the  names  of  some 
of  the  thoroughfares.  Douro  Cottages  was  Welling- 
ton in  his  chrysalis  state,  Wellington  Road  marks 
the  height  of  his  glory  :  meek  little  Woronzow 
Road  stands  for  the  great  Russian  diplomatist, 
and  so  on.  The  fiery  Lord  Dundonald,  one  of  the 
illustrious  mercenaries  that  helped  to  found  South 
America,  under  his  family  name  of  Cochrane,  still 
has  a  street  all  to  himself. 


SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS       21 

Into  this  classic  village  there  came  one  day  to 
settle  a  schoolmaster,  a  French  refugee.  But  few 
of  us  knew  him  for  that  at  the  time  :  it  was  a 
later  discovery.  In  name,  if  not  in  appearance,  he 
was  as  good  an  Englishman  as  the  best  of  us.  He 
passed  as  a  Mr.  Howard.  His  English  had  nothing 
particular  the  matter  with  it  to  our  uncritical 
ears  :  it  was  only  his  looks  that  failed  him  a  little 
in  the  character. 

He  was  a  pure-blooded  meridional,  I  should  say 
— a  Roman  nose,  jet  black  hair,  a  long  sallow  face, 
a  blazing  eye — the  raw  material  of  the  ideologist, 
in  every  place  and  clime.  After  knowledge  showed 
him  as  a  wild  man  of  the  French  revolution  that 
started  on  its  second  grand  tour  of  Europe  in  1848. 
He  went  through  it  all,  as  one  of  the  Reds,  whom 
Cavaignac  had  to  mow  down  by  thousands  to  save 
the  Republic  from  itself,  and  keep  the  vessel  of 
state  with  its  head  to  the  wind.  Of  course  he  was 
on  the  beaten  side — that  is  to  say,  with  the  ex- 
tremists. They  made  a  good  fight  for  it — Paris 
in  a  state  of  siege  for  four  months  ;  horse,  foot, 
and  artillery  in  the  streets,  especially  artillery ; 
the  Faubourg  du  Temple  pounded  into  submission, 
and  the  end  in  a  regular  capitulation  as  between 
army  and  army.  Naturally  such  a  man  was  one 
of  the  first  to  get  killed  or  exiled  under  the  coup 
d'etat  in  '51.  Louis  Napoleon,  Prince  President, 
had  no  use  for  the  long-haired,  especially  when  they 
happened  to  be  of  the  class  of  college  professors,  as 
was  this  one. 

He  came  to  our  shores,  I  daresay,  without 
waiting  to  pack  his  trunk,  but  with  a  most  extra- 


22  MY  HARVEST 

ordinary  outfit  of  hopes  and  dreams.  He  had  the 
best  culture  in  the  gift  of  France,  could  read  the 
stiffest  classics  like  a  newspaper,  and  as  a  man  of 
letters  was  everything  that  he  was  not  as  a  Re- 
publican. On  the  barricades,  I  am  sure,  there  was 
no  getting  him  to  listen  to  reason ;  in  his  class 
room  no  getting  him  to  listen  to  anything  else — a 
man  in  two  distinct  pieces  never  quite  joined. 
Before  the  open  page,  especially  when  it  was  in 
Greek  or  Latin,  he  was  all  for  tradition,  restraint, 
measure,  and  the  horror  of  the  needless  word.  He 
was  not  without  means  in  his  flight.  He  took  a 
villa,  put  forms  and  desks  in  its  small  breakfast- 
room,  and  opened  a  school  which  he  never  thought 
of  calling  classical,  because  it  never  entered  his 
mind  that  it  could  be  anything  else.  Pupils 
dropped  in,  myself  among  them,  because  the  old 
sailor  thought  I  was  not  getting  on  properly  with 
my  writing ;  and,  as  they  came,  whatever  their 
ages,  sizes,  or  opportunities  in  life,  they  were 
immediately  put  into  the  classic  tongues. 

What  a  school !  what  a  master !  In  a  few  months 
we  were  nibbling  even  Greek  with  him,  and  he 
was  giving  us  a  sort  of  foretaste  of  the  great 
tragedies.  How  he  did  it  I  don't  quite  know,  but 
there  it  was.  The  lessons  were  delightful.  It  was 
a  revel  of  the  mighty  line,  with  war  and  adventure, 
heroes,  gods,  and  goddesses,  and  life  abounding 
for  its  theme.  We  took  to  it  as  ducks  to  water, 
never  suspecting  that  it  might  be  a  poor  prepara- 
tion for  our  destined  lot  of  the  small  clerkship,  or 
the  place  behind  the  counter.  The  sailor  waived 
the  point  of  the  penmanship,  when  he  saw  the 


SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS        23 

crabbed  characters  in  my  exercise  book,  or  at  any 
rate  was  disposed  to  take  them  as  a  new  variety 
of  ornamental  writing  by  which  he  set  great  store. 
The  master  "  jawed  "  us  into  fine  thoughts,  wise 
or  foolish  as  the  case  might  be.  Every  lesson 
was  a  long  talk  about  everything,  including  the 
shortcomings  of  things  British — the  glory  of  things 
French  in  art  and  arms.  We  learned  to  be  ashamed 
of  Waterloo  as  a  battle  won  by  a  fluke.  He  would 
tell  us  with  trembling  lip  of  the  day  when  France 
was  beset  with  "  twice  one  million  men,"  not 
forgetting  to  mention  the  advantage  of  putting  it 
that  way  for  rhetorical  effect. 

Then  suddenly  it  all  came  to  an  end.  My  father 
was  shown  one  of  my  Greek  exercises,  and  sniffed, 
still  keeping  his  thoughts  to  himself.  On  a  second 
visit  he  was  confronted  by  a  proposal  of  the  master 
to  put  the  whole  school  into  uniform  next  term, 
on  the  model  of  the  Ecole  Polytechnique.  With 
that  his  patience  broke  down.  It  was  military  : 
a  thing  he  hated  ;  it  meant  needless  outlay ;  it 
gave  no  outlook  for  the  future  in  accordance  with 
his  plans.  I  was  taken  away  and  sent  to  a  cheap 
adventurer  in  useful  knowledge  who  had  lately 
come  into  the  neighbourhood.  The  sociable  heathen 
of  Olympus,  in  so  far  as  I  had  made  their  acquaint- 
ance, faded  out  of  my  ken,  and  I  was  never  to  have 
a  second  chance.  It  was  a  pity.  The  creature  had 
a  way  with  him  whatever  it  was,  for  I  have  for- 
gotten its  details.  All  I  know  is  that  he  made  us 
love  what  is  generally  the  most  odious  part  of  a 
schoolboy's  task,  the  learning  of  the  tongues.  I 
think  our  declensions  and  conjugations  came  to 


24  MY  HARVEST 

us  only  as  they  occurred  in  the  text,  and  in  a 
sort  of  revival  of  Cowley's  method  of  learning 
not  books  from  grammar,  but  grammar  from 
books. 

I  recovered  my  patriotism,  however,  by  watch- 
ing the  Household  Brigade,  then  quartered  in  the 
adjacent  barracks,  as  they  marched  out  in  all  the 
glory  of  pipe-clay  and  pioneers  for  the  morning 
parade.  In  a  couple  of  years  more  came  the  great 
break  in  the  long  peace ;  and  our  Victorian  Grena- 
diers were  sent  out  to  have  their  bones  bleached 
in  the  Crimea. 

My  father,  deeply  pondering,  had  determined 
to  give  me  an  artistic  calling  that  should,  at  the 
same  time,  be  a  sort  of  business  yielding  practical 
results  in  a  "  living."  His  choice  fell  on  one  of  the 
oldest  in  the  world,  as  then  practised  by  Benjamin 
Wyon,  who  bore  the  title  of  "  Chief  Engraver  of 
Her  Majesty's  Seals,"  and  who  was  addressed  by 
her  in  his  letter  of  appointment  as  "  Our  Trusty 
and  Well  Beloved."  He  engraved  the  great  seal  of 
England,  with  the  girl  queen  crowned  in  her  chair 
of  state  on  one  side,  and  on  the  other  sallying 
forth  on  horseback  to  execute  justice  and  mercy, 
sceptre  in  hand.  For  a  thing  of  this  kind  it  is  on 
the  colossal  scale,  a  glorified  cheese  plate  in  its 
circumference  of  solid  silver,  for  an  impression 
affixed  to  every  grant  of  a  patent  or  other  docu- 
ment specially  issued  by  the  Crown.  But  it  is  a 
case  of  the  tail  wagging  the  dog  :  you  have  to  lift 
the  seal  and  leave  the  parchment  to  scramble  after 
as  well  as  it  can.  It  is  in  the  keeping  of  the  Lord 
Chancellor,  and  its  occasional  transference  from 


SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS        25 

him  to  a  successor  is  a  ceremony  of  almost  religious 
solemnity.  It  is  carried  on  these  occasions  by  a 
special  officer  well  rewarded  for  his  pains,  and  in 
an  embroidered  bag  bearing  the  Royal  Arms. 
The  theft  of  the  great  seal  from  the  house  of  Lord 
Thurlow  in  an  earlier  reign  was  an  event  of  historic 
importance,  and  till  its  recovery  all  the  machinery 
of  State  seemed  to  be  at  a  standstill.  Why  might 
not  I,  my  father  mused,  in  time  to  come,  win 
fortune  and  even  fame  as  successor  to  my  master. 
His  services  were  constantly  in  requisition.  If 
others  made  history,  he  chronicled  it  in  enduring 
bronze  as  an  engraver  of  medals.  His  composition 
for  the  Crimean  War — yet  to  come — was  a  vic- 
torious Roman  soldier  crowned  by  the  Angel  of 
Peace.  He  had  seen  us  through  smaller  troubles 
of  this  nature,  I  fancy,  in  the  Indian  wars.  The 
Shakespeare  medal,  with  all  the  chief  characters 
of  the  plays  as  a  kind  of  family  party,  was  also 
his  work.  Whatever  was  done  in  this  line  was 
usually  by  a  Wyon  :  they  were  a  kind  of  engraving 
clan  with  William  Wyon  as  its  chief — Royal 
Academician  and  Engraver  to  the  Mint.  One  of 
his  masterpieces  was  the  head  of  the  youthful 
Victoria,  idealized,  and  yet  a  likeness,  which 
figured  on  the  earliest  of  her  coins,  and  gave  the 
note  even  for  the  postage  stamps.  His  Italian 
predecessor,  Pistrucci,  engraved  the  Waterloo 
medal,  with  the  help  of  his  daughter  and  pupil ; 
the  old  widower  and  the  old  maid  working  side  by 
side  to  the  last,  and  wholly  sufficient  to  themselves. 
The  art  is  really  a  branch  of  the  Quietist  cult : 
it  tends  to  teach  you  the  nothingness  of  all  passing 


26  MY  HARVEST 

perturbations,  and  the  absolute  solidarity  of  present 
and  past.  The  purely  realistic  medals  of  Andrieux, 
telling  the  story  of  the  French  Revolution  in 
sketchy  scenes,  are  among  the  few  modern  excep- 
tions to  this  rule.  It  was  all  in  the  line  of  my 
earliest  associations  :  what  with  the  old  street,  the 
old  neighbourhood,  the  old  school,  I  seem  to  have 
been  born  into  the  past.  History,  in  any  sense 
worthy  of  the  name,  would  be  impossible  without 
the  medallist  and  the  engraver  of  coins.  He  fixes 
beyond  dispute  the  epochs  of  empire  and  the  dates 
of  events.  Without  him  we  should  gaze  merely 
in  ignorant  wonder  on  that  milky  way  of  dead  and 
forgotten  kings  and  princes  who  nourished  in  the 
prime,  when  every  petty  potentate,  often  not  much 
better  than  a  robber  chief,  struck  a  coinage  for 
himself.  The  picture  and  the  statue,  perishable  as 
produced  only  in  a  single  example,  are  much  more 
at  the  mercy  of  time.  The  coin  or  the  medal  in 
its  innumerable  issues  seldom  becomes  wholly 
extinct.  The  most  ancient  arts  and  sciences  have 
their  account  in  it ;  it  preserves  even  the  quaint 
symbolism  of  heraldry  in  its  most  enduring  form. 
You  must  know  what  you  are  about,  to  condense 
the  whole  story  of  a  family  through  the  ages  into 
the  blazon  of  a  seal.  And  so  must  the  man  who 
tries  to  make  it  out.  What  of  this,  for  instance, 
as  a  technical  description  of  a  coat  of  arms  in  my 
old  Chaucerian  church  ?  "  The  centre  shield  bears 
the  following  arms — Quarterly,  1st  and  4th,  arg. 
a  chevron  gu.  between  wolves'  heads  erased  sa. 
for  Jacob,  2nd  and  3rd,  az.  three  trussed  lambs  arg. 
Crest,  a  lion  statant  sa.  The  shield  on  the  top  of 


SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS        27 

column  on  the  side  nearest  to  chancel  bears  the 
charge — Jacob  impaling  arg.,  a  chevron  between 
three  stags  passant  attired  or." 

But  the  old  art  tends  to  make  prematurely  aged 
men.  Years  and  years  after  this  period  of  my  life, 
when  I  was  at  Berlin,  I  bethought  me  of  looking 
up  a  German  brother  craftsman  by  whose  side  I 
had  worked  at  Wyon's.  He  had  become  chief 
engraver  to  the  Prussian  mint.  Our  greetings  were 
cordial,  as  may  be  supposed,  and,  in  response  to 
my  cheery  "  Now  let's  see  some  of  the  work,"  he 
blinked  with  modest  pride,  and  turning  to  a  small 
cabinet  not  much  bigger  than  a  grip-bag,  drew  out 
drawer  after  drawer  filled  with  specimen  impres- 
sions of  medal  and  coin  exquisitely  wrought.  The 
better  part  of  his  life  had  gone  into  it  :  I  thought 
of  Le  Sage's  "  Here  lies  the  soul  of  the  licentiate," 
and  somehow  wished  his  collection  had  bulked 
larger  to  the  view.  The  art  is  really  a  branch  of 
sculpture,  though  its  glories  escape  the  eye  of  all 
but  the  connoisseur  :  in  spite  of  the  moralists,  it 
may  still  be  possible  to  cultivate  well  doing  on  too 
small  a  scale. 

I  was  "  bound "  to  Benjamin  Wyon  in  old- 
fashioned  indenture  of  apprenticeship,  for  seven 
long  years.  There  were  not  many  of  us — one  or 
two  engravers  of  medals,  a  single  engraver  of  gems. 
As  a  highly  skilled  calling  it  could  hardly  have  been 
carried  on  by  the  methods  of  the  factory.  One  of 
the  seal  engravers  was  a  German.  There  was 
always  a  German  on  our  staff :  we  had  to  import 
him  as  being  better  trained  for  the  work  than  our 
native  practitioners.  The  gem  engraver,  however, 


28  MY  HARVEST 

was  of  our  own  people.  He  worked  at  a  wheel 
which  cut  the  hardest  stones  in  any  device,  with 
the  aid  of  minute  tools  of  various  sizes,  some  of 
them  no  bigger  than  a  pin's  head,  and  lightly 
touched  with  diamond  dust  and  oil.  The  diamond 
dust  perhaps  has  always  been  used  as  the  incisor; 
the  wheel  is  quite  a  modern  contrivance  but  a 
few  centuries  old.  Before  that  the  indefatigable 
Ancients  ground  out  their  designs  on  the  adaman- 
tine surfaces  of  the  stone,  with  a  sort  of  knitting- 
needle  of  iron  or  bronze  dipped  in  the  solution. 
Working  in  this  way,  they  produced  some  of  the 
most  stupendously  beautiful  of  statuesque  com- 
positions in  the  whole  history  of  art.  As  these 
were  mostly  in  use  as  signet  rings,  they  were 
limited  in  size  ;  yet  so  limited,  and  rarely  exceeding 
the  square  half  inch,  they  want  only  a  magnifying 
glass  of  microscopic  power  to  reveal  groups  as 
varied  and  as  perfect  in  detail  as  the  fragment  of 
the  Niobe  or  the  Laocoon.  One  might  have  been 
a  signet  ring  of  Pericles,  another  a  present  from 
Alcibiades  to  a  Persian  satrap,  or  a  noble  or  ignoble 
dame.  Our  gem  engraver,  perhaps  as  working  in 
this  immemorial  art,  was  a  particularly  quiet  man 
who  seemed  to  think  that  nothing  of  importance 
had  happened  for  three  thousand  years.  It  was 
the  very  mind  of  the  worker  subdued  to  the 
spiritual  suggestions  of  the  medium  in  which  he 
worked.  He  was  a  conservative  of  the  deepest 
dye,  like  most  craftsmen  of  the  higher  arts.  In 
this  respect,  however,  I  am  bound  to  say  he  had 
his  opposite  in  our  German  of  the  moment,  who 
had  come  to  us  as  a  refugee  of  the  abortive  '48  in 


SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS        29 

his  own  land.  The  honest  fellow  was  extremely 
frank  about  his  own  share  in  the  rising,  and  made 
no  scruple  of  confessing  that,  when  he  saw  the 
soldiery  and  heard  the  guns,  he  laid  his  own  down, 
and  made  the  best  of  his  way  to  the  ship  that 
brought  him  to  our  shores.  Here  he  recovered  his 
breath  and  his  Revolutionary  ardour,  and  now 
and  then  stood  up  for  his  principles  in  angry 
controversy,  in  which,  it  is  needless  to  say,  no 
converts  were  made  on  either  side. 


CHAPTER  III 
COLLEGE 

WHEN  work  was  over,  I  went  on  of  nights 
to  the  drawing  and  modelling  classes  of 
the  recently  established  Department  of  Science 
and  Art,  then  lodged  at  Marlborough  House,  and 
founded  by  the  Prince  Consort  by  way  of  remedy 
for  our  artistic  shortcomings  as  revealed  in  the 
Great  Exhibition  of  1851.  The  system  of  teaching 
was  a  bad  one,  as  it  consisted  mostly  of  mere 
copying,  but  it  has  since  been  greatly  improved. 
I  drew  Renascence  ornament,  from  the  flat,  modelled 
fruit  and  flowers,  heads  and  hands  from  other 
models  of  them,  without  ever  making  the  acquaint- 
ance of  the  living  originals,  and  so  after  a  fashion 
learned  the  rudiments  of  my  calling,  for  which, 
however,  to  tell  the  plain  truth  about  it,  I  had 
never  known  the  attraction  of  a  call.  From  first 
to  last  it  gave  me  the  fidgets,  and  I  returned  the 
compliment ;  I  was  a  very  poor  hand.  We  were 
left  too  much  to  ourselves  to  pick  it  up  or  leave  it 
alone,  as  we  liked.  The  Germans  wondered  how 
we  learned  anything  at  all.  "  I  worked  under  my 
father's  eye,"  one  of  them  used  to  say,  "  with  a 
4  mind  what  you're  at,  young  'un,  or  you'll  get  one  ' 
— meaning  a  clout  on  the  head." 

The  art  lessons  outside  soon  grew  stiffer,  and 

30 


COLLEGE  31 

made  more  inroads  on  my  time.  In  due  course  I 
had  to  leave  Marlborough  House  and  the  School 
of  Science  and  Art  for  Leigh's  in  Newman  Street — 
one  of  the  two  great  schools  (Gary's  hard  by  being 
the  other)  which  were  preparatory  to  the  Royal 
Academy.  Thackeray's  Clive  Newcome  worked 
at  one  or  the  other  of  them,  I  fancy  the  latter. 
There  it  was  all  high  art,  with  no  thought  of  an 
application  to  any  kind  of  manufacture,  and  with 
what  was  supposed  to  be  the  rigour  of  the  game. 
The  studio  derived  its  name  from  the  founder,  the 
master  or,  as  he  ought  rather  to  be  called,  the  pope. 
He  was  a  "  character,"  who  had  quarrelled  with 
the  Academicians  on  their  rejection  of  one  of  his 
works.  He  could  afford  to  sulk,  and  he  sulked  ; 
the  two  things  generally  go  hand  in  hand.  He 
had  means,  and  the  school  yielded  an  income  : 
he  said  he  would  never  send  in  another  picture, 
and  he  kept  his  word.  He  shut  himself  up  in  the 
vast  gloomy  house,  with  its  cavernous  recesses 
running  from  street  to  street,  and  went  on  painting 
as  though  for  his  life.  As  fast  as  the  pictures  were 
done,  they  were  hung  on  his  own  walls,  until  the 
rooms  were  choked,  when  the  staircase  took  up 
the  wondrous  tale.  Pictures,  pictures  all  the  way 
—Holy  Families,  operatic  brigands  of  Calabria, 
Roman  women  at  the  well,  with  whole  box-loads 
of  properties  for  the  use  of  the  models  from  the 
Hatton  Garden  slum.  It  was  the  old  outlook  in 
art  :  the  artistic  fiat  "  let  there  be  light  "  was  for 
a  later  dispensation.  Such  things  had  to  be 
painted  in  Newman  Street  :  it  was  not  dark 
enough  anywhere  else.  They  were  well  painted, 


32  MY  HARVEST 

after  a  fashion,  with  good  solid  brashwork,  and 
a  certain  sense  of  colour,  all  marred,  however,  in 
their  effect  on  the  beholder  by  the  stifling  sense  of 
indoors. 

Leigh  took  himself  seriously.  He  dressed  for 
his  part  after  the  old  masters — black  velvet 
dressing-gown  and  skull  cap,  to  set  off  white  hair 
and  flowing  beard  ;  and  in  all  but  his  excessive 
girth  of  waist  was  a  fine  figure  of  a  man.  He  was 
not  "  supposed  "  to  give  us  any  teaching  :  the 
old  housekeeper  always  reminded  us  of  that  when 
she  took  our  fees.  All  he  did  in  that  way  was  in 
the  nature  of  a  bonus.  He  simply  provided  casts 
of  the  great  antiques,  the  Diana,  the  Milo  Venus, 
the  Discobolus — the  Nike  of  Samothrace,  I  think, 
had  not  yet  crossed  the  seas  :  at  any  rate  she  was 
not  there — and  so  on  with  most  of  the  other  figures 
of  the  divine  pageant,  and  left  you  to  choose  your 
acquaintance  for  yourself,  without  the  benefit  of 
an  introduction.  You  were  understood  to  have 
learned  your  rudiments  before  you  went  there. 
Once  a  night  he  emerged  for  a  tour  of  the  galleries 
from  a  study  where  he  wielded  an  unresting  quill 
for  hours  at  a  time.  None  of  us  might  know  his 
subject,  but  I've  an  idea  that  he  was  engaged  on 
a  counter-blast  to  Ruskin,  then  the  heresiarch  of 
art,  now  its  fogey.  Oh,  the  spite  of  the  years  ! 
"  Pre-Raphaelism,"  he  once  said  sententiously, 
"  means  that  art  was  better  five  minutes  before 
Raphael  was  born  than  five  minutes  after  he 
died."  As  a  fragment  I  admit  it  gives  no  clue  to 
his  opinion,  yet  I  fear  that  with  regard  to  ideas 
he  was  chargeable  with  the  same  fault  as  the 


COLLEGE  33 

unfortunate  travellers  of  Gadshill,  execrated  by 
Falstaff  as  haters  of  youth.  There  is  much  ex- 
cuse for  it  :  new  things  naturally  make  enemies. 
Spiritually  or  otherwise  they  tend  to  throw  you 
out  of  your  reckoning.  "  Open  air  school !  What 
does  it  mean  ?  "  said  another  artist  of  the  period. 
"  I'll  tell  you  :  a  skylight  to  my  roof  where  the 
tiles  did  very  well  before.  It'll  be  a  long  time 
before  I  see  my  money  back  again.'*  The  lives  of 
the  martyrs  should  take  more  cognizance  of  diffi- 
culties of  this  sort. 

He  strode  forth,  ponderous  in  tread  as  the  Man- 
Mountain  among  his  pigmies,  and  with  a  long  clay 
in  his  mouth.  Sometimes  it  was  a  tour  of  gloomy 
silence  broken  only  by  sniffs.  Now  and  then  again 
a  word  of  praise,  or — a  thunderbolt.  The  delicious 
uncertainty  of  your  luck  in  it  supplied  the  thrill 
that  was  lacking  in  his  work.  It  was  a  long  time 
before  any  notice  fell  to  my  share.  But  one 
night,  I  was  toiling  away  at  a  hand  of  Michelangelo, 
on  the  great  scale,  only  a  few  sizes  under  that  of 
Rodin's  main  de  Dieu,  when  he  stopped  before  my 
easel.  It  was  a  hand  all  ridged  with  the  strenuous 
lines  of  toil  in  work  or  war.  I  suppose  I  had  run 
to  excess  of  zeal  in  the  attempt  to  do  justice  to  the 
ridges  as  they  crossed  each  other  in  their  radiation 
to  all  points  of  the  compass.  At  any  rate,  he  saw 
in  a  moment  the  weakness  of  its  exaggerated 
strength.  "  The  rails  seem  all  right,"  he  said, 
i4  but  you  might  give  us  a  glimpse  of  the  train," 
and  passed  on.  Here  again  there  was  still  that 
want  of  intelligent  direction  which  is  the  vice  of 
our  method.  He  did  not  so  much  guide  his  flock 


34  MY  HARVEST 

as  lie  in  wait  to  prod  them  when  they  wandered 
and  strayed. 

Poynter,  now  President  of  the  Royal  Academy, 
and  Stacy  Marks  served  under  Leigh,  with  many 
another  since  known  to  fame  of  a  kind.  One 
notable  studio  figure  must  not  be  forgotten,  Henry 
S.  Leigh,  his  son,  who  wrote  "  Carols  of  Cockayne  " 
and  was  shaping  well  for  the  laureateship  of  the 
vers  de  societe  when  he  died.  He  appeared  only  at 
rare  intervals  in  the  galleries,  and  then  but  as  a 
transient  and  embarrassed  phantom  with  large 
and  soulful  eyes  set  in  a  faraway  look  that  be- 
tokened a  total  lack  of  interest  in  us  and  our  ways. 
I  forget  if  Samuel  Butler  and  Forbes  Robertson — 
both  only  in  their  first  love  of  a  career — were  of 
our  school  or  of  Gary's.  The  former  was  another 
Thackeray  in  his  passion  for  a  rebel  art  of  painting 
that  refused  to  yield  to  his  pursuit,  while  literature 
was  always  dogging  his  footsteps  begging  for  a 
smile.  I  have  heard  Robertson  say  that  Butler 
one  day  timidly  put  into  his  hand  a  copy  of  the 
first  book  from  his  pen — was  it  The  Way  of  All 
Flesh  ? — and  that  when  he  took  it  home  both 
his  father  and  mother,  no  mean  judges,  went  into 
ecstasies  of  prophecy  on  the  great  things  in  letters 
that  afterwards  came  to  pass. 

For  good  or  ill  this  was  the  way  of  studying  in 
our  Victorian  prime.  Our  methods  were  antiquated, 
we  had  a  good  deal  of  leeway  to  fetch  up,  our  signal 
lights  emitted  but  a  feeble  ray.  To  that  period 
belongs  the  rise  of  the  Manchester  school,  not  of 
politics  nor  of  painting,  though  there  was  one  of 
each,  but  of  buyers  in  the  fine  arts.  In  the  age 


COLLEGE  35 

of  commercial  prosperity  by  leaps  and  bounds,  the 
successful  cotton  spinner  had  listened  too  readily 
to  the  whisper  "  have  a  taste,"  and  he  began  to 
buy  under  the  inspiration  of  his  brother  traders, 
the  dealers  in  art.  Many  a  poor  work  was  foisted 
on  him  in  the  belief — honest  perhaps  on  both  sides 
— that  it  would  soon  be  worth  double  the  money. 
Few  things  were  quoted  under  four  figures  and 
not  a  few  for  five  ;  but  when  in  after  years  they 
were  brought  to  the  hammer,  they  reached  for  the 
first  time  their  true  value  at  something  in  the 
threes  and  pretty  low  down  at  that.  The  smart 
of  that  discovery  led  to  the  present  craze  for  old 
masters,  which  by  the  way  threatens  to  run  the 
same  disappointing  course.  The  slump  in  modern 
art  is  but  a  case  of  the  once  bit,  twice  shy  of 
Manchester's  rueful  discovery  that  the  buyer  may, 
in  his  own  way,  find  himself  in  the  category  of  the 
sold.  The  moral  is  one  for  both  sides  of  the  At- 
lantic :  don't  listen  to  the  prophets  of  the  counter 
and  the  sale  room  "  onless  ye  know." 

Meantime,  following  my  own  inclination,  which 
we  generally  do  in  the  long  run,  I  read  voraciously 
at  home,  with  a  strong  desire  to  recover  my  lost 
chance  of  a  liberal  education.  I  was  a  pitiful 
ignoramus  :  so  I  scraped  up  enough  to  join  the 
Working  Men's  College,  experimentally  for  a  single 
term.  It  was  then  in  Great  Ormond  Street,  in 
the  very  house  from  which  the  great  seal  was 
stolen  from  Lord  Thurlow.  At  the  time  of  my 
joining,  the  College  was  still  in  its  first  youth,  and 
Frederic  Denison  Maurice,  the  Principal,  had 
grouped  round  him,  as  founders,  a  number  of  men 


36  MY  HARVEST 

eminent  in  the  church,  law,  literature  or  art— 
among  them  Ruskin,  Ludlow,  Furnivall  and 
Hughes.  The  idea  was  to  bring  the  best  culture 
of  the  time  down  to  the  workmen,  as  a  check  on 
the  Revolutionary  tendencies  of  the  time.  Maurice 
had  a  keen  sense  of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  as 
realized  through  the  brotherhood  of  the  churches 
and  the  union  of  classes  :  his  preaching  in  Lincoln's 
Inn  Chapel  was  a  new  evangel. 

The  moment  you  entered  the  College  you  were 
to  feel  one  with  the  best  in  self-respect,  with  no 
sense  of  inferiority,  except  in  the  luck  of  oppor- 
tunity, and  this  the  teaching  was  to  set  right. 
There  was  to  be  no  idea  on  either  side  of  patronage, 
the  taint  of  most  of  the  earlier  efforts  of  the  kind. 
In  the  Mechanics'  Institutes,  for  instance,  the 
workman's  friend  seemed  to  descend  on  him  from 
the  skies,  and  to  be  rather  in  a  hurry  to  get  back 
to  them,  at  closing  time.  There  was  in  some  sort 
also  the  tyranny  of  the  curriculum.  I  hear 
Maurice  now,  at  one  of  the  College  meetings, 
proclaiming  "  This  is  Liberty  Hall :  everybody's 
to  do  as  he  likes,  and  thim  that  won't  do  it  shall 
be  made  " — a  bull  fathered  of  course  upon  an 
Irishman. 

Hughes,  Chancery  barrister  in  working  hours, 
and  author  of  Tom  Brown's  Schooldays  in  his 
leisure,  stood  for  muscular  Christianity ;  and 
among  other  things  took  the  boxing  class,  where 
he  blacked  your  eye  by  way  of  an  introduction  to 
the  gentle  life.  The  aim  was  to  make  the  College 
a  true  university  and  seat  of  learning  for  the 
noblest  end  of  progress  in  the  humanities.  The 


COLLEGE  37 

note  is  preserved  in  the  still  flourishing  institution 
in  Crowndale  Road,  now  one  of  the  largest  of  the 
kind  in  the  kingdom,  and  in  its  way  unique.  No 
one  is  invited  to  go  there  with  a  view  to  bettering 
his  lot  in  the  generally  accepted  sense  of  the  term. 
He  may  do  this  or  he  may  not,  but  his  business  at 
the  College  is  to  better  his  mind  as  the  organ  of  his 
soul,  and  to  get  access  to  the  best  thought  of  all 
the  ages  as  a  means  to  that  end.  Our  newest 
institutions  for  working-class  teaching,  the  Poly- 
technics and  the  like,  are  not  much  more  than 
technical  schools  where  the  student  hopes  mainly 
to  qualify  for  better  wages,  and  the  chance  of  an 
escape  into  capitalism.  This  is  no  reproach  :  it  is 
simply  the  statement  of  a  difference  ;  and  those 
who  have  forced  the  lower  ideal  upon  the  work- 
men have  themselves  to  thank  for  it. 

Furnivall,  the  great  Shakespearian  scholar,  and 
greater  human  being,  who  died  but  the  other  day, 
succeeded  beyond  all  the  others  in  putting  himself 
upon  a  perfect  equality  with  his  fellows  by  the 
process  of  levelling  up.  The  men  under  his  sway 
were  his  comrades  first  and  last.  He  led  them  in 
long  holiday  tours  abroad,  in  week-end  walks  at 
home  where  it  was  hard  going  both  in  exercise  and 
high  thought.  They  were  a  band  of  happy  school- 
boys, master  and  men,  and  he  gave  them  the 
ripest  fruits  of  his  amazing  knowledge  of  our 
earlier  literature  as  freely  as  to  the  savans  of  the 
world.  His  note  was  plain  speaking,  simple  living, 
and  the  hatred  of  all  pretence.  Compromise  was 
foreign  to  his  nature.  At  the  annual  supper  he 
used  invariably,  and  of  malice  aforethought,  to 


38  MY  HARVEST 

scandalize  his  brother  dons  by  the  aggressive 
advocacy  of  his  pet  project,  the  admission  of 
women  to  the  classes.  The  speech  usually  ran  like 
this — I  quote  purely  from  memory  of  course  : — 
"  Yes,  I'm  glad  to  learn  from  the  report  that  we 
are  doing  so  well ;  but  why  in  the  name  of 
common  sense  must  we  still  refuse  to  do  better  by 
bringing  in  the  girls  ?  "  Shrieks  from  the  students  : 
solemn  silence  at  the  high  table.  "  What  are 
you  afraid  of  ? — that  the  young  fellers  may  some- 
times take  to  courting  the  young  women  ?  Why 
that's  the  best  of  all  culture,  in  its  right  time  and 
place." 

What  he  could  not  get  done  by  the  College,  he 
did  for  himself  by  starting  a  sculling  club  for  work- 
girls,  that  soon  became  the  pride  of  the  river.  On 
Saturdays  and  Sundays  he  took  them  out  and 
home  again,  from  Hammersmith  as  a  starting- 
point,  with  Richmond  for  the  tea  and  turn,  and 
club  supper  for  the  wind  up  in  quarters.  The  little 
bearded  man  with  the  bright  and  almost  blazing 
eyes  was  the  uncrowned  king  of  the  feast.  Supper 
over,  it  was  a  dance,  with  the  College  men  in 
partnership.  Many  of  the  girls  were  fine  strappers 
to  be  sure,  with  no  more  suspicion  of  waist  beyond 
the  girth  of  Nature  than  the  Venus  of  Milo  herself. 
No  harm  came  of  it  that  I  ever  heard  of,  but  only 
much  good  in  the  shape  of  abiding  friendships, 
and  I  daresay  many  a  match.  This  was  his  practi- 
cal way  of  doing  things.  He  never  moralized  on 
the  relations  of  men  and  women,  rich  and  poor, 
but  just  brought  them  all  together  as  chums  and 
left  the  rest  to  take  care  of  itself.  Another  scheme 


COLLEGE  39 

of  the  same  sort  was  his  periodical  river  treat  for 
the  little  girls  of  the  slums — still  in  the  club  craft. 
I  have  sat  with  him  in  a  boat  filled,  in  utter  defiance 
of  the  load  line,  with  this  human  freight,  myself 
perhaps  the  only  nervous  creature  in  the  cargo, 
although  I  may  easily  have  been  the  only  one  able 
to  swim.  The  doctor  for  one  was  not.  His  aquatic 
career  was  dotted  with  spills,  but  he  always  came 
out  of  them  right  side  up,  if  only  astride  the  keel. 
Yet  if  anything  had  happened  when  we  had  all 
the  children  aboard  !  I  used  to  ponder,  in  gloomy 
uncertainty,  my  choice  of  the  labours  of  salvage, 
between  two  infants,  each  cuddling  up  to  me  in 
friendly  contest  to  know  which  I  liked  best.  Well, 
nothing  did  happen,  so  the  only  thing  worth  saying 
is  blessings  on  the  luck  of  the  event. 

He  had  his  failings,  the  hot  temper  and  the 
hasty  word,  that  once  got  him  into  mild  trouble 
with  the  law  in  an  action  for  damages  for  libel  or 
something  of  the  sort.  He  was  constitutionally 
immoderate,  and  was  apt  to  scent  a  humbug  in 
everybody  who  did  not  agree  with  him  in  every- 
thing. Even  the  Browning  Society  of  his  creation 
was  strained  almost  to  breaking  point  in  his 
quarrels  with  the  family  of  the  poet.  He  classed 
them  as  snobbish  in  their  estimate  of  their  great 
man.  They  cared  nothing,  he  used  to  say,  for 
Browning  the  writer  :  all  their  concern  was  for  the 
"  gentleman  "  who  by  the  gift  that  enabled  him 
to  hob-nob  with  dukes,  had  in  Chinese  fashion 
ennobled  his  ancestors.  His  sister,  Miss  Browning, 
was  certainly  not  free  from  this  weakness  :  she 
passed  much  of  her  time  in  covering  up  the  tracks 


40  MY  HARVEST 

of  a  fairly  humble  origin.  Furnivall  was  merciless 
in  his  exposure.  He  took  the  trouble  to  trace  the 
Browning  genealogy,  and  to  publish  the  results  in 
The  Academy  for  April  12,  1902,  a  few  years  after 
the  poet's  death.  His  researches  ended  in  the 
discovery  of  a  "  Robert,"  footman  and  butler  (who 
died  in  1746),  as  "  the  first  known  progenitor,"  and 
the  one  that  took  his  fancy  most.  Robert's  son 
was  an  innkeeper,  the  two  that  came  next  in  the 
line  were  clerks  in  the  Bank  of  England.  The 
poet's  grandfather  had  married  a  Creole,  his  mother 
was  of  German  extraction.  That  nothing  might 
be  wanting  to  rebuke  "  the  contemptible  vanity  of 
successors  "  he  invited  subscriptions  for  a  memorial 
brass  to  a  "  Faithful  Footman,"  with  the  sting  in 
the  tail  of  the  inscription  in  the  shape  of  a  quota- 
tion from  Browning,  the  poet  :  "  All  service  ranks 
the  same  with  God."  These  disclosures  naturally 
completed  the  breach  between  the  scandalized 
relations  and  the  man  who,  as  founder  of  the 
Browning  Society,  had  done  so  much  for  the  fame 
of  their  chief. 

Charles  Kingsley,  though  not  among  the 
founders,  had  great  influence  with  them,  as  leader 
of  the  earlier  Christian  Socialists,  and  author  of 
Alton  Locke.  In  spite  of  its  shortcomings,  that 
book  will  always  have  its  place  in  the  canon  of 
Socialist  fiction.  If  it  is  no  longer  a  gospel  to  us, 
it  is  still  of  deep  import  if  judged,  as  every  work 
should  be,  in  its  relation  to  the  thought  and 
feeling  of  its  day.  Kingsley  was  really  of  the 
caste  of  the  gentry,  and  never  forgot  it,  or  tried  to 
forget.  He  held  fast  to  the  idea  of  social  grades,  and 


COLLEGE  41 

was  as  keen  for  a  House  of  Lords  of  the  right  sort 
as  for  right  masters  and  right  men.  A  landed  aris- 
tocracy was  in  his  view  "  a  blessing  to  the  country, 
as  representing  all  that  was  noble  and  permanent 
in  the  national  character."  The  existing  society 
was  to  go  on  for  ever,  only  high  and  low  were  to 
be  brought  into  harmonious  relations  of  sympathy 
and  mutual  service.  It  was  in  fact  not  much 
more  than  the  Disraelian  Young  England  party, 
with  a  strong  religious  bias.  The  whole  scheme  of 
the  College  was  of  that  nature.  Maurice  was 
Christian  first,  and  certainly  no  Socialist  at  any 
time.  None  the  less  was  he  badly  mauled  at  times 
by  his  brethren  of  the  churches.  All  have  to  suffer 
for  the  good  that  is  in  them  as  well  as  for  the  bad  : 
if  it  were  not  so,  where  would  be  the  merit  of 
virtue  ?  The  Bishop  of  London  forbade  him  to 
preach  in  the  diocese.  Archdeacon  Hare  called 
him  conceited  and  irreverent.  Dr.  Jelf  expressed 
"  horror  and  indignation." 

Professor  Seeley  was  on  the  teaching  staff,  with 
Huxley,  Tyndall,  Dante  Rossetti,  Madox  Brown 
and  Frederic  Harrison,  to  name  but  a  few.  One 
and  all,  teachers  and  founders,  they  were  of  the 
pick  and  pride  of  England. 

As  to  the  students,  the  teaching  flowered  in 
Marks — we  never  called  him  anything  else — who 
died  but  the  other  day.  He  began  as  a  printer, 
and  stuck  to  his  trade  till  he  was  able  to  retire  in 
easy  circumstances,  the  fruit  of  his  own  exertions. 
He  never  had  any  quarrel  with  society  as  such. 
He  worked  hard  at  the  Humanities  for  the  pure 
love  of  them ;  and  while  a  fair  reading  scholar  in 


42  MY  HARVEST 

French  and  German  especially,  with  some  know- 
ledge of  Spanish,  Italian  and  Latin  for  his  budget 
of  acquirement,  he  never  gave  himself  airs.  He 
thought  and  spoke  as  a  working  man,  none  the  less 
so  because  his  English  was  as  pure  as  Bunyan's. 
After  innumerable  benefactions  to  the  College,  in 
service  and  in  hard  cash,  throughout  the  course  of 
his  life,  he  was  for  crowning  this  part  of  his  work, 
in  his  last  moments,  with  a  legacy  of  a  thousand 
pounds.  But  the  accident  that  caused  his  death 
left  him  too  weak  to  sign  the  necessary  papers. 
His  daughter,  however,  and  her  husband,  a 
College  man,  paid  the  money  without  expecting  a 
word  of  praise  for  it  or  receiving  more  than  a  line 
of  grateful  acknowledgment  in  an  annual  report. 
On  both  sides  there  was  a  careful  avoidance 
of  the  assumption  that  "  College  people  "  could 
possibly  do  anything  else.  The  culture  had  left  its 
mark. 

I  did  not  remain  long  at  the  College.  I  hardly 
know  why — I  think  because  I  suffered  then,  as  at 
other  times  in  my  life,  from  a  most  plentiful  lack 
of  cash.  It  may  also  have  been  because  I  thought 
I  knew  a  better  way  :  I  did  not ;  but  I  had  to  find 
that  out.  So  I  bobbed  about  from  one  thing  to 
another  and  mastered  none.  I  bought  my  books 
for  myself  at  the  old  second-hand  bookshops,  then 
extant  in  Holywell  Street  and  in  Vinegar  Yard 
under  the  lee  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre.  "  This  lot 
4d.,"  or  lower  sometimes,  down  to  the  penny,  with 
here  and  there  a  bargain  (if  one  had  only  known) 
worth  buying  at  fifty  pounds  to  sell  again.  The 
chances  of  that  sort  in  literature  as  in  bric-a-brac 


COLLEGE  43 

are  no  longer  what  they  were.  To  this  day  I  have 
a  Holy  Living  in  all  but  a  first  edition,  bought  for 
a  few  pence. 

I  bought,  as  I  have  said,  without  guidance — 
dead  and  gone  school  books,  "  Wanostrocht's  "  Latin 
Grammar — I  may  have  blundered  with  the  name, 
but  few,  I  fancy,  will  be  able  to  find  me  out — Clark's 
Latin  texts  and  translations  side  by  side,  a  century 
or  so  ahead  of  the  Hamiltonian  system,  and  with 
prefaces  to  the  effect  that  they  were  prepared  on 
a  plan  recommended  by  Milton  and  Locke.  Some- 
times I  merely  dipped  into  the  Pierian  spring,  well 
knowing  I  could  never  afford  to  pay  for  my  drink. 
1  'Ow's  business,  Joe  ?  ):  asked  a  neighbouring 
dealer  of  a  colleague,  as  I  was  once  engaged  in  this 
way.  "  Quiet,"  was  the  answer ;  "all  readers  an' 
no  buyers  to-night."  I  dropped  the  volume  and 
vanished  into  the  fog  to  hide  my  shame.  I  was 
like  the  monkey  with  the  nuts  in  the  fable.  I  could 
withdraw  nothing  from  the  vase  of  scholarship 
because  I  wanted  to  grasp  all.  The  College  would 
have  disciplined  me  into  a  restricted  choice,  and 
carried  me  through  into  positive  acquirement  of 
some  sort.  I  meant  well :  that  is  all  I  can  say.  I 
sat  up  till  far  into  the  night,  kneeling  sometimes 
at  my  task  to  prevent  me  from  going  to  sleep  in  my 
chair.  To  this  period  of  rather  self-conscious 
virtue  belongs  an  alternative  plan  to  enable  me 
to  rise  very  early  in  the  morning.  I  hung  a  stone 
from  the  ceiling,  and  adjusted  a  lighted  candle  to 
the  cord,  contrived  to  burn  so  many  hours,  sever 
the  string,  and  bring  down  the  weight  as  an  alarum. 
This  succeeded  only  too  well.  The  thing  came 


44  MY  HARVEST 

down  with  a  clatter  that  roused  me  and  the  house- 
hold together. 

Given  a  certain  temperament,  and  I  had  it,  all 
this  portended  book-writing  or  crime — perhaps 
both  in  a  way.  I  made  up  my  mind  to  be  a  writer, 
and  to  slip  the  collar  of  the  other  art  as  soon  as  I 
could. 


CHAPTER  IV 

LITTLE  GRUB  STREET 

THE  years  passed ;  I  was  out  of  my  appren- 
ticeship and  a  full-fledged  worker  in  the 
craft  I  was  beginning  to  abhor.  I  set  up  for  my- 
self with  parental  aid,  and  with  varied  fortunes, 
mostly  bad.  But  more  years  had  to  pass,  till 
about  my  six  and  twentieth,  before  my  chance 
came.  I  was  anxious  not  to  hurt  my  father's 
feelings  by  throwing  myself  once  more  on  his 
hands,  without  any  present  chance  of  earning  a 
living.  I  had  ventured  to  sound  him  as  to  the  possi- 
bility of  a  real  education  for  the  Bar,  but  of  course, 
and  I  think  I  may  say  luckily,  I  found  him  cold. 
It  would  have  meant  more  years  of  dependence 
with  scant  opportunities  at  the  end  of  them.  If 
I  could  make  the  change  to  another  calling  with- 
out his  aid,  or,  till  it  was  done,  without  his  know- 
ledge, I  might  find  him  more  tractable  or  more 
resigned.  But  how  manage  it  ?  A  regular  pursuit 
generally  implies  the  fixity  of  the  caste  system  : 
you  tend  to  that  by  the  force  of  circumstances. 
I  had  to  think  of  the  way  in  which  his  cold  and 
reserved  nature  had  risen  almost  into  ecstasy  in 
my  prospects  of  a  career  as  they  had  shaped  them- 
selves in  his  mind.  In  particular  I  remember  one 
Sunday  afternoon's  walk  in  the  Green  Park  when 

45 


46  MY  HARVEST 

he  had,  as  it  were,  glowed  with  vision  as  he  saw 
me  another  Chief  Engraver,  perhaps,  to  the  Mint. 
Buckingham  Palace  in  the  background  seemed 
to  glow  with  him  under  the  evening  sun,  be- 
nignantly  as  though  with  the  promise  of  another 
"  trusty  and  well  beloved "  on  the  part  of  its 
august  inmate,  and  all  for  me. 

The  long-desired  opening  came  unsought  at  last, 
as  such  things  usually  do.  There  was  a  scheme 
afoot  for  a  Working  Class  Exhibition,  as  between 
England  and  France,  and  through  the  good  offices  of 
a  friend  at  Wyon's,  another  rolling  stone  like  my- 
self, I  was  offered  the  post  of  secretary  at  two 
pounds  a  week.  I  was  to  go  over  to  Paris,  en- 
trancing prospect  !  and  invite  the  French  work- 
men to  co-operate  with  their  English  brethren 
in  showing  what  they  could  achieve  on  their  own 
account  without  the  assistance  of  the  capitalist. 

Behold  me  then  in  Paris  with  hardly  a  word  of 
French  to  my  name,  a  matter  one  had  almost 
forgotten  on  both  sides.  I  could  read  it  without 
much  difficulty,  for  I  had  not  ignored  the  subject 
in  my  scheme  of  self-education,  but  the  rest  was 
still  to  seek.  Luckily  it  was  not  exactly  so  bad 
as  that  with  German.  I  had  exchanged  lessons 
with  one  of  my  foreign  mates  in  the  workshop,  and 
could  rattle  away  in  pigeon  German  wholly  innocent 
of  grammar,  almost  as  easily  as  in  my  own  tongue. 
And  by  good  hap  this  served.  The  secretary  of 
the  French  committee  spoke  German  quite  well, 
and  expounded  me  to  his  colleagues  in  a  way  that 
served. 

What  a  new  world  Paris  was,  in  all  the  well- 


LITTLE  GRUB  STREET  47 

known  stages  of  the  first  experience  of  foreign 
travel.  I  had  never  before  left  England,  hardly 
left  London  and  its  neighbourhood.  Of  course, 
the  first  impression  it  gave  me  was  that  foreigners 
were  deliberately  "  contrary "  in  their  marked 
tendency  to  differ  from  our  way  of  doing  things. 
Everybody  knew  that  brewers'  drays  should  be 
broad,  but  not  long.  Here  they  were  narrow 
and  so  long  that  they  could  hardly  turn  a  corner. 
This  was  carried  out  in  everything  one  saw — 
manners,  institutions,  social  life  ;  and  since  Eng- 
land was  manifestly  just  so,  it  seemed  a  pity  to 
make  wilful  departures  from  it.  I  was  a  raw 
hand. 

This  state  of  mind  was  shared  by  "  my  Com- 
mittee." In  our  exquisite  ignorance  of  the  state 
of  parties  in  France  we  could  think  of  nothing 
better  than  to  ask  for  Imperial  patronage.  It  was 
given  only  too  readily,  at  the  instance  of  M.  Emile 
Ollivier,  then  in  office  and  in  high  favour  at  Court, 
as  a  deserter  from  the  Opposition  led  by  Jules 
Favre  and  M.  Thiers.  This  was  bad  enough  as  a 
beginning  on  our  part,  but  when  we  went  straight 
from  him,  in  all  innocence,  to  the  real  leaders  of 
the  workmen  who  detested  both  the  minister  and 
his  master,  we  perpetrated  a  very  pig  upon  bacon 
of  blunder  and  confusion.  The  workmen  could  not 
refuse  to  co-operate  with  their  French  enemies, 
since  the  invitation  came  from  their  English 
friends,  yet  how  could  they  play  second  fiddle  to 
the  Imperial  Government.  They  did  it  all  the 
same,  for  our  sakes.  Perhaps  the  deplorable 
French  of  our  circular  of  invitation  melted  their 


48  MY  HARVEST 

hearts.  The  whole  thing  must  have  been  a  pecu- 
liarly sore  trial  for  the  most  influential  men  of  the 
popular  party,  the  two  Reclus,  Elisee  the  great 
geographer  and  Elie  his  brother  and  colleague  in 
science. 

It  was  a  great  thing  to  be  of  their  intimacy, 
though  I  was  not  in  a  position  to  enjoy  the  full 
advantage  of  it.  They  lived  in  the  Batignolles, 
a  sort  of  Parisian  Camden  Town.  Such  freedom 
from  all  pretence  is  not  at  all  uncommon  with  men 
of  the  first  importance  in  France.  At  a  later 
period  I  used  as  a  journalist  to  call  on  Jules  Simon, 
ex-President  of  the  Council,  in  his  fifth  floor  suite 
in  the  Place  de  la  Madeleine.  I  have  dined  with 
Yves  Guyot,  an  ex-minister,  in  a  modest  third 
floor  over  the  water  and  in  a  patriarchal  setting  of 
family  and  friends.  Degas  the  painter  used  to  live 
like  a  simple  bourgeois.  Elisee  Reclus  was  then 
laying  the  foundations  of  his  monumental  work 
The  Earth,  with  many  a  year  to  wait  for  pecuniary 
results.  He  was  emphatically  a  man  who  lived 
by  and  for  ideas.  He  had  married  a  lady  of  colour, 
quadroon  perhaps  or  octoroon,  wisely  indifferent 
to  the  fact  that  such  unions  were  not  common 
among  the  white  races.  She  was  of  great  refine- 
ment both  in  manners  and  in  her  cast  of  mind. 
I  had  to  sit  dumb  in  their  salon  partly  through 
timidity,  mainly  by  reason  of  my  want  of  their 
language — and  in  a  manner  deaf,  for  the  same 
reason.  But  I  could  use  my  eyes  ;  and  there,  as  I 
afterwards  came  to  know,  I  was  in  touch  with  the 
little  band  who  were  quietly  engineering  the  fall 
of  the  second  Empire,  and  the  revenge  of  the 


LITTLE  GRUB  STREET  49 

democracy  for  the  coup  d'etat.  It  was  a  great 
experience — a  revolution  in  the  making,  quiet 
walks  and  talks  between  bloused  workmen  and 
professors,  the  frequent  woman  in  the  case,  and 
all  animated  by  a  common  purpose  and  pursuing 
it  with  a  relentless  single-mindedness  common  to 
the  French  character.  There  was  even  a  certain 
pedantry  in  their  devotion.  For  them  Napoleon 
III  was  no  emperor  :  he  was  Monsieur  Bonaparte, 
and  the  Empress  was  but  Madame  his  wife.  They 
never  paused  or  slackened  till  they  had  sent  both 
packing,  after  Sedan.  That  done,  the  Reclus, 
under  the  same  dominion  of  their  fixed  idea — the 
people  as  rulers  and  masters  of  themselves  with- 
out appeal — engineered  the  Commune  against  the 
Republic  of  the  bourgeoisie.  We  know  what 
happened  after  that — Elisee  caught,  and  saved 
only  by  the  appeal  of  the  whole  world  of  science, 
when  he  stood  almost  under  the  rifles  of  the  firing 
party. 

The  elder,  Elie,  was  the  perfect  thing  in  fanati- 
cism, cold  and  self-contained.  He  might  have  sat 
for  the  portrait  of  a  Covenanter.  Spiritually  he 
reminded  me  of  those  animals  whose  jaws  lock 
in  what  they  bite.  Heredity  may  have  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  it  :  the  father  was  a  Swiss  pastor 
of  the  Calvinistic  type.  The  pair,  I  imagine,  had 
long  since  parted  with  their  Christianity  to  put 
philosophic  Anarchy  in  its  place.  With  old  Blanqui, 
another  notable  figure  of  the  time,  they  were  for 
ni  Dieu,  ni  maitre,  the  absolute  freedom  of  the 
individual  to  walk  by  his  own  light,  with  nothing 
but  his  conscience  for  guide  and  law.  Hence  their 


50  MY  HARVEST 

share  in  the  rising  of  the  Commune.  It  was  no  move- 
ment for  license  for  its  own  sake.  On  the  contrary, 
it  was  rooted  in  the  old  idea  that  you  had  but  to  give 
man  perfect  liberty,  to  make  him  the  nearest  approach 
to  an  angel  we  are  ever  likely  to  see.  Their  aim 
was  the  irreducible  minimum  of  authority,  and 
they  hoped  to  find  it  in  the  commune  as  the  atomic 
unit  of  administration.  The  smaller  the  unit,  the 
nearer  to  perfection  :  Paris  was  a  big  commune, 
but  that  was  an  accident  of  the  situation.  For 
the  ideal,  imagine  a  village  with,  say,  a  hundred 
inhabitants.  The  hundred  were  to  be  omnipotent 
within  their  own  bounds,  and  with  a  sort  of 
secretarial  agent  carrying  on  their  will,  but  this 
only  by  way  of  friendly  suggestion.  For  the  will, 
even  of  a  majority  of  ninety-nine,  was  not  binding 
on  the  hundredth  man  :  he  might  stand  out,  for 
his  convictions  or  for  his  whim.  It  was  good 
going  in  metaphysics,  yet  hundreds  of  thousands 
spilled  their  souls  for  it  when  the  time  came. 
There  are  some  six  and  thirty  thousand  communes 
in  France  :  had  all  gone  well  in  Paris,  there  would 
have  been  as  many  independent  states.  If  a  single 
one  objected  to  railways,  it  might  say  "  thus  far 
shalt  thou  go  and  no  farther  "  to  the  longest  line. 
This  was  the  pure  absolute  of  doctrine,  as  meekness, 
self-sacrifice,  and  turning  the  other  cheek  was  the 
absolute  of  Christianity ;  but  there  were  com- 
promises for  the  weakness  of  human  nature — an 
imperious  necessity  under  which,  as  we  know,  a 
certain  servant  of  the  high  priest  had  to  lose  an 
ear.  Elisee,  with  all  his  natural  kindness  of  heart, 
could  not  avoid  the  compromise  of  revolution. 


LITTLE  GRUB  STREET  51 

"  Never  has  great  progress,  special  or  general,  been 
made  by  simple  specific  evolution  :  it  has  always 
been  made  by  a  revolution."  He  signed  a  declara- 
tion to  that  effect  with  Kropotkine  and  many 
more.  He  did  so  probably  as  a  geographer  :  Zola 
may  have  been  thinking  of  him  when  he  put  this  in 
the  mouth  of  one  of  his  characters  :  "I  was  forced 
to  make  a  place  for  the  volcano,  the  abrupt  cata- 
clysm, the  sudden  eruption,  which  has  marked 
each  geologic  phase,  each  historic  period."  Yet, 
if  there  had  been  cursing  in  Elisee,  he  could 
have  cursed  the  bomb  and  the  bomb-throwers  : 
"  Anarchy  is  the  summum  of  humane  theories  : 
whoso  calls  himself  an  Anarchist  should  be  gentle 
and  good." 

I  came  most  in  contact  with  Elie  because  his 
English  was  better.  The  only  soft  spot  in  him 
was  his  love  of  literature  :  he  usually  carried  a 
volume  of  Hugo  in  his  pocket,  perhaps  as  the  best 
expression  of  the  current  revolt  for  freedom,  in 
that  domain.  Yet,  inconsistently  enough,  he  was 
disposed,  as  a  Frenchman,  to  make  a  reservation 
here  in  favour  of  order  and  law.  Our  easy-going 
independence  of  these  things  in  English  letters 
was  hateful  to  him.  "  The  negroid  dialects,"  he 
once  remarked  to  me  in  his  icy  way,  "  have  the 
same  simplicity  of  structure."  He  looked  on 
Carlyle  as  a  sort  of  jelly  fish  of  authorship — amor- 
phous, as  he  was  wont  to  put  it,  by  way  of  hoisting 
the  engineer  with  his  own  petard.  He  was  a  poor 
companion,  concentrated,  silent,  cold,  but  there 
were  gleams  as  of  banked  fire  in  his  eyes  that 
boded  mischief,  and  no  doubt  accounted  for  a 


52  MY  HARVEST 

deformity  of  one  hand,  resulting,  I  believe,  from  a 
sabre  stroke  during  the  coup  d'etat.  I  told  him  I 
should  like  to  be  a  writer  :  "  It  is  quite  enough," 
he  said,  "  to  be  a  man."  I  drew  a  fancy  portrait 
of  him  in  John  Street  as  Azrael.  He  was  the  most 
implacable  person  of  principle  I  have  ever  met, 
machine  made,  to  ends  and  uses  of  machinery,  in 
every  fibre  of  his  being. 

We  held  our  Anglo-French  Working  Class  Ex- 
hibition, at  Sydenham,  in  due  course,  and  I  had 
to  return  to  England  with  my  new  occupation  gone. 
To  go  back  to  the  old  one  was  impossible  :  I  had 
lifted  the  curtain  on  a  corner  of  life.  For  good 
or  ill,  I  was  going  to  try  my  luck  in  writing  for 
the  Press. 

I  had  ten  pounds  :  I  determined  to  make  it  last 
as  long  as  I  could,  and  meantime,  to  write,  write, 
write.  So  I  took  a  lodging  in  a  sort  of  Little  Grub 
Street — in  all  but  the  name — running  out  of  the 
Gray's  Inn  Road,  and  with  a  garret  floor  proper 
to  the  occasion.  "  May  our  endeavours  to  please 
be  crowned  with  success  " — that  was  the  humour 
of  it.  I  was  so  eager  for  this  that  I  never  thought 
of  pleasing  myself :  so  it  was  a  sort  of  double 
event  of  misapplied  energy.  I  turned  out  stories, 
essays,  these  preferred,  skits,  sketches,  anything 
that  came  into  my  mind,  as  distinct  from  coming 
out  of  it,  and,  of  course,  I  had  nothing  but  failures 
to  my  credit.  My  little  trading  ventures  came  back 
without  having  found  a  market,  or  reported  them- 
selves total  losses  by  simply  keeping  silent  as  to 
their  fate.  Once  I  thought  the  luck  had  turned 
with  a  conditional  acceptance  of  a  desperate 


LITTLE  GRUB  STREET  53 

article  on  clocks  and  watches.  It  was  worked  up 
from  "  the  usual  sources  of  information  "  in  the 
public  libraries,  and  offered  to  the  editor  of  The 
Clerkenwell  News,  then  in  its  modest  beginnings  as 
a  mere  trade  organ,  with  a  good  advertising  con- 
nection of  parochial  extent.  It  came  out,  in  fitful 
instalments,  almost  repeating  the  count  of  the 
weeks  it  had  taken  me  to  write.  I  got  nothing 
for  it,  and  by  arrangement  :  there  lay  the  sting. 
44  We  don't  pay  for  this  sort  of  thing,"  said  the 
editor  genially,  and  he  seemed  to  say  with  the 
man  in  Dickens  :  "  you  are  very  young,  sir,"  as 
he  looked  me  in  the  face.  And  I  did  get  something 
after  all — print !  Delicious  intoxicant !  beyond 
poppy  and  mandragora  as  medicine  for  the  sleep 
sweetened  by  dreams  of  fame. 

Then  came  the  awakening :  The  Clerkenwell 
News  wanted  no  more ;  the  other  periodicals 
maintained  their  steady  demand  for  peace  and 
quietness ;  the  ten  pounds  had  nearly  melted 
away.  I  stretched  myself  full  length  on  the  floor, 
and  thought  I  could  have  made  a  better  world. 

I  had  but  one  confidant  in  all  this  time  of  trial : 
my  old  associate  at  Wyon's  who  had  started  the 
scheme  of  the  Anglo-French  Working  Class  Ex- 
hibition. He  was  an  erratic  creature,  with  a  streak 
of  genius  in  his  composition  that  might  have 
matured  into  achievement,  but  for  want  of  ballast. 
How  we  rambled  the  streets  together  and  talked 
of  all  things  wise  and  foolish  since  we  talked  of 
our  hopes.  Fine  chances  were  actually  reserved 
for  him,  but  not  yet.  It  was  one  day  to  be  his 
luck  to  capture  The  Times,  then  a  paper  almost 


54  MY  HARVEST 

hymned  by  our  ruling  class  as  a  blessing  from 
above.  The  occasion  was  a  letter,  a  column  long, 
on  the  franchise,  from  the  pen  of  a  Conservative 
working  man.  It  was  the  sensation  of  the  hour. 
The  great  agitation  for  Reform  was  well  afoot  with 
John  Bright  as  its  prophet,  and  the  workmen  as 
the  class  clamouring  for  the  vote  :  the  Hyde  Park 
Railings  were  to  fall  in  the  struggle,  though  as  yet 
they  were  safe.  The  writer  of  the  letter  came  as  a 
sort  of  Providential  deserter  to  the  enemy.  It  was 
signed  "  Robert  Coningsby,"  his  real  name,  and 
it  brought  with  it  a  flavour  of  the  Disraelian  ideals, 
the  sons  of  toil  ranged  under  the  aristocracy  as 
their  natural  leaders.  He  had  naturally  the  trick 
of  the  pen.  I  remember  one  striking  passage  : 
"  We  will  have  no  king  but  Csesar."  He  had 
moreover,  benefited  by  the  educational  patronage 
of  Mr.  Martin,  the  founder  of  the  long  historic  law 
suit,  Martin  v.  Mackonochie,  or  Low  Church  v. 
High.  Democrat  as  he  was  by  his  humble  birth 
and  calling,  he  was  quite  an  aristocrat  in  his  im- 
patience of  a  superior.  He  was  determined  to 
arrive,  and  he  took  this  as  the  nearest  way.  And 
arrive  he  did  after  a  fashion  :  within  a  few  years 
of  that  time  he  was  a  war  correspondent  on  the 
staff  of  The  Times,  whose  editor  had  kept  his  eye 
on  him  ever  since  the  famous  letter.  It  was  a 
tremendous  rise  for  one  who  had  started  as  a 
mechanic  in  a  paper  cap,  in  our  lower  premises  at 
Wyon's  where  they  struck  the  medals  at  huge 
presses,  after  roasting  them  red  hot  over  roaring 
fires  between  stage  and  stage  of  the  process.  He 
had  the  utmost  contempt  for  the  political  leaders 


LITTLE  GRUB  STREET  55 

of  his  own  class,  with  whom  he  had  coquetted  for 
an  opening  in  their  ranks  only  to  find  them  wedged 
tight  to  keep  him  out — a  miniature  Disraeli  in  fact. 
At  one  time,  fired  by  the  success  of  his  Anglo-French 
Exhibition,  he  invented  for  himself  a  sort  of  mission 
to  the  United  States,  actually  had  an  audience  of 
the  President,  and  I  believe  sat  at  meat  with  him 
at  the  White  House.  I  remember  a  triumphant 
letter  from  him  on  the  theme  of  "  how's  this  for 
high." 

I  fancy  it  was  in  his  blood  :  Hardy  has  told  us 
that,  if  you  want  really  all  that  is  left  of  many 
of  the  oldest  families,  you  must  look  for  them 
among  the  humblest  of  the  people.  It  was  so  in 
his  case  :  a  pure  artisan  in  manners  and  customs, 
there  was  yet  "  a  something  about  him,"  backed 
by  a  family  tradition  of  origins.  There  was  dis- 
tinction in  his  cast  of  feature — the  Roman  beak, 
the  full  eye  and  short  upper  lip  ;  and  with  it  a 
good  manner  when  he  cared  to  put  it  on.  Add  to 
this  an  easy  possession  of  his  h's,  a  feat,  in  the 
circumstances  of  his  upbringing.  He  sang  well, 
and  he  could  throw  himself  into  a  love  ballad  with 
a  conviction  hard  to  withstand.  As  an  offset,  he 
loved  beer,  as  he  used  to  say  because  there  were 
no  bones  in  it,  drank  it  turn  and  turn  with  a  mate 
out  of  the  same  pewter,  and  was  a  great  trencher- 
man at  every  kind  of  feasting  within  his  reach. 
In  spite  of  all,  a  captivating  companion  for  man 
or  woman,  especially  the  latter,  a  Lassalle  in  shirt- 
sleeves. His  conceit  of  himself  was  colossal ;  his 
temper  uncontrollable  ;  he  would  ruin  the  best 
chances  with  a  hasty  word. 


56  MY  HARVEST 

In  one  of  our  walks,  when  I  was  downcast  with 
the  contemplation  of  the  last  shot  in  the  locker 
of  my  hoard,  we  saw  a  contents  bill  of  The  Pall 
Mall  Gazette,  then  under  the  editorship  of  Frederic 
Greenwood.  It  claimed  our  attention  for  "  A  Night 
in  a  Workhouse — by  an  Amateur  Casual."  It  was 
appetizing  :  the  Gazette  was  the  smartest  thing  in 
journalism,  written  by  gentlemen  for  gentlemen, 
on  the  plan  sketched  in  jest  by  Thackeray  in  one 
of  his  happy  excursions  of  satirical  fancy.  Green- 
wood had  taken  the  hint  and  turned  it  into  the 
living  reality  of  a  new  evening  paper. 

His  brother  James  was  the  Amateur  Casual ; 
and  the  pair  had  carefully  worked  out  their  scheme 
of  a  descent  by  a  dandy  into  the  social  shades. 
The  Amateur  took  care  to  tell  us  that  he  had  been 
driven  down  in  his  editor's  brougham,  and  in  slum 
toggery,  to  the  purlieus  of  the  workhouse,  and 
there  dropped  to  see  how  it  felt  to  be  an  outcast. 
The  rest  was  business  of  the  usual  sort — dainty 
disgust  of  the  associations,  the  food,  and  above 
all  of  the  compulsory  bath.  The  instalments  sold 
as  fast  as  they  could  be  printed  :  it  was  the  sensa- 
tion of  the  day.  We  bought  our  paper,  revelled 
in  it  over  our  pipes,  and  were  separating  after  a 
midnight  sitting  when  my  friend  started  a  happy 
thought.  Dives  had  gone  to  have  a  look  at  Lazarus  ; 
why  should  not  Lazarus  return  the  compliment,  in 
The  Evening  Star,  the  organ  of  the  other  side  ? 
I  rose  to  it ;  and  we  agreed  that  we  should  each 
try  it  on  his  own  account,  and  send  in  the  article 
that  seemed  to  shape  best. 

We  parted  on  that ;   and  next  day  I  set  to  work. 


LITTLE  GRUB  STREET  57 

It  wrote  itself  in  a  manner  :  I  was  so  taken  with 
the  idea.  The  machinery  was  of  the  simplest ;  it 
took  the  form  of  "  A  Night  in  Belgrave  Square — 
by  a  Costermonger."  In  the  details,  of  course, 
I  claimed  the  full  benefit  of  all  the  chartered 
liberties  of  farce.  The  coster  was  smuggled  into 
the  fine  house  as  a  guest,  by  a  friend  engaged  as 
an  extra  hand  for  the  service  of  a  great  dinner. 
He  borrowed  his  uniform  for  the  occasion,  drove 
to  the  rendezvous  in  his  barrow,  left  in  a  bye- 
street,  passed  muster  because  the  host  and  hostess, 
having  separate  lists  as  the  result  of  a  tiff,  were 
each  under  the  impression  that  he  came  on  the 
other's  invitation.  For  him  the  gathering  was  but 
one  long  torment  of  pity  for  a  fallen  state  of  social 
enjoyment,  "  feller  creeturs "  with  no  genuine 
interest  in  each  other,  and  "  so  cold  like  they  seemed 
to  give  me  the  spasms."  He  escaped  from  it  to 
bread  and  cheese  and  an  onion,  and  registered  a 
vow  of  "  never  again." 

As  soon  as  it  was  done,  I  rushed  off  with  it  to 
our  rendezvous,  and  threw  it  at  my  chum  for  a 
catch. 

"  There's  mine  :  where's  yours  ?  " 

"  Haven't  begun  it  yet :  met  a  little  party  :  you 
know." 

"  I  say  !  look  alive  about  it,  or  we  shall  miss  our 
chance." 

"  Why  won't  yours  do  ?  Let's  see."  He  glanced 
over  it,  handed  it  back  to  me :  "  That's  all  right ; 
we'll  walk  down  and  drop  it  in  the  box." 

Four-and-twenty  hours  later  and  London  was  in 
a  rash  of  a  new  poster — this  time  of  The  Evening 


58  MY  HARVEST 

Star — "  A  Night  in  Belgrave  Square — by  a  Coster- 
monger,"  in  big  capitals,  and  with  the  bill  all  to 
itself.  I  hurried  off  to  show  it  to  him,  but  he  was 
before  me  of  course  with  his  own  copy.  We  dis- 
cussed plans  for  new  articles.  I  was  for  falling 
back  on  rejected  contributions.  "  Nothing  of  that 
sort,"  he  said ;  "  why  go  further  afield  ?  Go  on  with 
the  Costermonger,  and  make  him  a  character — the 
Coster  here,  there  and  everywhere  in  a  survey  of 
the  whole  scheme  of  things.  What  have  you  and  I 
been  talking  about  all  this  time  ?  And  you  the 
worst,  with  your  everlasting  sense  of  contrasts 
between  high  and  low,  wise  and  simple,  rich  and 
poor."  He  was  right :  the  one  thing  I  had  never 
thought  of  writing  about  was  the  thing  that  was 
nearest  to  my  heart.  The  shyness  of  the  pen  is 
sometimes  the  most  invincible  of  all.  He  had 
helped  me  to  find  myself. 

And  so  to  bed,  but  not  to  sleep  for  the  throb  of 
thoughts.    The  Press  had  claimed  me  for  its  own. 


CHAPTER    V 
FLEET  STREET 

AT  the  end  of  the  week  the  cashier  handed  me 
two  guineas  with  the  expression  of  a  hope 
that  it  might  only  be  the  beginning  of  our  rela- 
tions. It  was  the  first  wage  for  work  of  this  kind 
I  had  ever  touched,  and,  as  such,  it  had  a  most 
beneficial  effect  on  my  spirits.  It  seemed  to  lift 
me  at  a  bound  out  of  the  amateur  class.  The 
compliments  of  my  new  patrons  must  be  sincere, 
for  they  had  backed  their  opinions  with  their 
money.  My  friend  and  I  cracked  a  bottle  over  it ; 
and  with  this  and  other  rejoicings  the  gold  was 
soon  reduced  to  small  change. 

Then  came  an  introduction  to  the  staff.  Justin 
McCarthy  sent  for  me,  and  I  was  presented  in 
due  form  as  one  who  was  going  to  be  "  one  of  us." 
I  felt  like  the  initiate  of  a  priesthood.  These  were 
writers  ;  and  in  my  callow  state  of  mind  the  people 
who  regularly  got  into  print  had  suffered  the 
mystic  change  into  something  that  was  almost 
sacramental. 

Their  chief  was  well  calculated  to  inspire  this 
feeling  with  the  charm  of  his  manner.  As  I  have 
said  of  him  elsewhere,  "  Pleased  with  thyself  whom 
everyone  can  please,"  might  have  been  written  of 
Justin  McCarthy.  It  would,  however,  have  to  be 

69 


60  MY  HARVEST 

understood  in  its  best  sense.  There  was  nothing 
of  the  self-satisfaction  of  vanity  in  his  inexhaustible 
amiability.  It  sprang  from  a  genuine  charity, 
a  genuine  joy  in  being  and  in  doing,  as  good 
things. 

As  a  writer  he  had  incomparable  ease  ;  and  for 
once,  though  by  way  of  exception,  this  made  easy 
reading  for  others.  The  maxim  on  which  he  con- 
sistently acted  in  all  the  labours  of  composition 
was  that  a  man  need  never  seek  to  do  more  than 
his  level  best.  Something  of  his  essentially  Celtic 
temperament  perhaps  went  into  this  theory.  In- 
numerable columns  of  print,  and  pages  as  the 
leaves  of  Vallombrosa,  did  not  seem  to  leave  a 
wrinkle  on  his  brow,  or  to  add  or  take  a  tint  from 
the  pure  white  and  red  of  his  complexion.  If  he 
had  to  lecture,  he  went  straight  to  his  work  without 
a  thought  about  it  except  in  the  general  scheme. 
His  solicitude  never  extended  to  the  form,  and 
still  less,  if  possible,  to  the  expression.  He  spoke 
out  of  a  full  mind  and  left  all  the  rest  to  take  care 
of  itself. 

It  was  the  same  later  on  with  his  speeches  in 
the  House.  With  a  better  voice,  he  would  have 
left  his  mark  as  an  orator.  As  it  was  he  too  often 
seemed  to  be  speaking  "  to  his  own  beard."  But 
the  substance  of  what  he  said  was  admirable  within 
the  limits  of  excellence  which  Nature  and  choice 
had  assigned  to  him.  Ease  was  the  principle  of  his 
literary  being.  His  prodigious  memory  was  stored 
with  cases  in  point  from  two  or  three  literatures, 
from  which  he  could  quote  by  chapter  and  verse. 
He  quoted  freely,  because  he  enjoyed  freely  :  his 


FLEET  STREET  61 

reading  had  manifestly  agreed  with  him.  He 
had  taken  his  authors,  as  he  took  men  of  flesh  and 
blood,  as  good  fellows  whose  best  things,  whether 
they  told  for  or  against  him,  were  infinitely  in- 
teresting as  products  of  human  power.  Geniality 
was  his  note.  He  seemed  to  write  with  the  softest 
of  swan  quills  dipped  in  a  fluid  of  milk  and  honey, 
without  an  effort,  without  a  pang,  till  the  task  was 
done.  He  instinctively  avoided  all  those  parts  of 
his  subject  that  might  give  himself,  or  his  readers, 
a  headache.  It  was  all  picture,  suggestion,  felicity 
of  phrase.  In  this  way  he  produced  his  prodigious 
output  of  journalism  and  of  magazine  literature. 
The  mere  titles  of  his  topics  would  tax  the  industry 
of  a  German  compiler.  He  seemed  to  have  written 
on  everything  that  was  stirring  in  his  time — 
politics,  literature,  philosophy,  manners. 

His  very  limitations  were  means  to  an  end  : 
nature  was  fashioning  the  author  of  A  History  of 
Our  Own  Times.  "  One  is  helped  in  writing 
history,"  he  said,  "  by  being  a  novelist."  That 
really  remarkable  work  was  in  a  new  style  of  what 
may  be  called  middle  history — the  glittering  bird's- 
view  of  the  candidatures  for  immortality  in  the 
history  to  come.  It  was  not  profound  ;  it  was  not 
learned  ;  it  was  not  problem  in  politics  or  morals  ; 
it  was  a  genial,  tolerant  survey  of  an  epoch,  written 
without  a  trace  of  party,  for  the  benefit  of  those 
who  sometimes  have  to  read  as  they  run  ;  and  such 
are  the  bulk  of  mankind.  It  was  commissioned  by 
one  publishing  house,  and  then  returned — on  pay- 
ment of  a  handsome  compensation — in  a  cold  fit 
of  alarm  as  to  the  effect,  on  the  book  market,  of  his 


62  MY  HARVEST 

championship  in  Parliament  of  Home  Rule.  With 
a  smile  and  a  shrug,  he  at  once  offered  it  to  another 
house,  and  it  made  the  tour  of  the  English-speaking 
world.  The  publisher  of  little  faith  lost  no  time  in 
going  into  sackcloth  and  ashes,  but  the  mischief 
was  done. 

The  success  of  the  original  issue  was  immediate 
and  prodigious.  The  author's  royalties  in  this 
country  realized  sums  that  were  only  to  be  written 
in  five  figures.  If  there  had  been  copyright  in  the 
United  States  at  the  time  of  its  publication,  he 
might  have  retired  on  a  competence  from  this  one 
production  alone.  But,  alas  !  political  life  had 
claimed  him  for  its  own ;  and  the  cause  of  Ireland 
was  the  altar  on  which  he  laid  the  sacrifice  of  his 
fortune.  As  he  went  deeper  and  deeper  into 
politics  he  had,  of  course,  less  and  less  time  for  the 
labours  of  the  desk.  His  income  fell  off,  and  all 
possibility  of  saving  was  brought  to  an  end  by  the 
direful  catastrophe  of  the  Irish  Exhibition.  He 
had  guaranteed  that  ill-starred  undertaking,  which 
had  Olympia  for  the  scene  of  its  failure,  and  he 
was  one  of  the  few  of  his  associates  whose  position 
made  them  profitable  game  for  the  creditor.  He 
was  bled,  and  bled,  and  bled  again  by  process  of 
law,  and  as  fast  as  the  veins  were  replenished  by 
his  industry  they  were  drained  once  more. 

But  all  this  was  yet  to  be  when  I  joined  in  the 
halcyon  days.  On  Saturdays  we  often  supped  at 
his  house  in  Kennington,  then  still  touched  with 
rural  charm.  These  entertainments  were  to  my 
limited  experience  as  feasts  of  the  gods.  William 
Black  was  of  the  company,  when  he  was  not  away 


FLEET  STREET  63 

on  correspondence  during  the  Prusso- Austrian  war 
of  1856.  Black  was  soon  to  try  his  hand  at  the 
novel.  His  first  attempt,  I  believe,  in  that  form 
was  called  Love  or  Marriage,  prudently  suppressed 
afterwards  when  his  works  were  collected  for  the 
canon.  It  was  among  the  first  of  the  risky  stories, 
the  "  or  "  turning  on  the  supposition  that  the  two 
states  might  be  deadly  opposites,  and  that  you  had 
to  make  your  choice.  It  came  into  the  office  for 
review  ;  and  the  task  fell  to  the  lot  of  Cooper,  then 
sub-editor,  and  afterwards  editor  of  The  Scotsman. 
"  Governor,"  he  said  to  the  chief,  "  I've  done  my 
best  for  it ;  but — oh  !  "  McCarthy  himself  was 
then  in  the  running  for  the  prizes  of  fiction.  Most 
of  his  work  in  that  line,  as  in  others,  was  bright  and 
optimistic,  a  tender  love  story  ending  with  wedding 
bells,  and  interspersed  with  sketches  of  life  as  it  is 
lived  on  the  public  scene,  in  foreign  travel,  or  in 
the  social  round,  all  taken  at  its  face  value.  If 
there  was  a  touch  of  envy  anywhere,  it  was  only  in 
the  breast  of  his  beautiful  and  charming  wife.  She 
never  could  get  quite  used  to  Black's  success  in 
subsequent  works,  especially  in  A  Daughter  of  Heth 
that  started  him  on  the  triumphs  of  his  career. 
For  her,  "  Justin  "  had  struck  the  note,  and  there 
could  not  possibly  be  any  departure  from  it,  con- 
sistently with  what  were  then  regarded  as  the 
sanctities  of  the  home.  She  was  the  hostess  at  our 
Saturday  suppers,  with  no  rival  of  her  own  sex, 
and  only  with  adorers  of  ours. 

We  saw  something  of  the  children — Justin 
Huntly  in  the  knickerbocker  stage,  the  daughter 
Charlotte  a  callow  little  thing  in  frocks  and  sashes, 


64  MY  HARVEST 

with  something  of  the  wondering  look  of  one  of 
Raffael's  cherubs  making  a  first  acquaintance  with 
a  planet  of  sorts.  These  children  lived  the  life  of 
their  parents  to  the  full.  When  still  early  in  their 
teens,  if  not  before,  they  had  seen  most  of  the  plays 
and  operas,  travelled  here,  there  and  everywhere 
on  the  Continent,  and  ransacked  their  father's 
library  at  will.  Later  on,  Justin  Huntly,  if  not  in 
knickerbockers,  still  without  a  hair  on  his  chin, 
was  once  met  at  his  father's  door  alighting  from  a 
hansom,  with  a  pile  of  Balzacs  for  his  luggage. 
He  was  going  to  review  the  master  from  start  to 
finish,  by  way  of  trying  his  luck  with  it  in  one  of 
the  magazines. 

Russell  of  Liverpool,  Sir  Edward  now  if  you 
please,  was  another  of  our  band.  He  then  wrote 
the  Parliamentary  leader  for  The  Star,  in  the  Press 
gallery  of  the  House — paragraph  by  paragraph  as 
he  distilled  the  whole  moral  of  the  distracting 
business  in  the  course  of  the  debate.  His  private 
and  personal  solace  in  literature  was  the  drama, 
as  associated  with  the  genius  and  fortunes  of  Henry 
Irving.  He  did  for  Irving  what  he  did  for  the 
debates,  discovered  his  true  significance,  and  gave 
him  his  place  in  the  critical  estimates  of  the  time, 
lectured  on  him,  and  every  now  and  then  produced 
a  solid  and  thoughtful  pamphlet  in  which  he 
chronicled  the  growth  of  his  powers. 

Among  others  destined  to  future  distinction,  we 
had  Wilson,  a  young  Irishman  from  Cork — Alpha- 
bet Wilson  we  used  to  call  him  by  reason  of  the 
number  of  letters,  E.  D.  J.,  to  his  name.  He  was 
then  a  writer  of  leaders  for  The  Star,  and  an 


FLEET  STREET  65 

ardent  Nationalist,  so  ardent  that  McCarthy  could 
hardly  drive  him  without  the  curb.  Afterwards 
he  became  chief  leader  writer  for  The  Times,  and 
took  an  active  part  in  the  campaign  against  Home 
Rule  that  bore  the  title  of  Parnellism  and  Crime. 
The  blood-curdling  revelations  under  that  heading 
were  not  by  his  hand  :  he  only  drove  the  moral 
of  them  home  in  the  leader  columns.  He  was 
altogether  an  extraordinary  person.  He  was  widely 
and  deeply  read  in  the  classics  and  in  modern 
tongues,  and  he  had  a  mind  that  could  pick  up  the 
pin  of  anecdote,  or  lift  the  weight  of  a  whole  thesis 
in  politics,  philosophy  or  history.  He  wrote  im- 
peccable prose,  at  the  pace  of  something  driven 
by  steam,  rarely  blotted  a  line,  and  in  that,  as  in 
all  other  respects,  was  the  ideal  journalist  in  the 
perfection  of  his  powers.  I  include  in  the  estimate 
a  thorough  conviction  in  his  abandonment  oi  the 
Radical  cause.  He  did  not  turn  his  coat :  he 
changed  it.  The  new  faith  was  as  much  a  matter 
of  conscience,  and  say  also  of  feeling,  with  him  as 
the  old.  I  can  testify  to  that,  for  it  was  the  subject 
of  many  a  hot  dispute  between  us  which  our  mutual 
friendship  never  allowed  to  degenerate  into  a 
quarrel.  I  doubted  his  judgment,  I  never  had 
cause  to  doubt  his  honesty.  I  own  to  a  partiality 
in  my  estimate,  for  all  that  :  he  was  ever  the  soul 
of  friendship  with  me.  He  lived  on  to  fight  the 
battle  of  his  paper  to  its  disastrous  close,  and 
finally  retired  on  a  liberal  allowance,  but  not  to  his 
hoped-for  rest  in  the  evening  of  life.  He  had  pro- 
jected an  important  political  work,  for  the  occupa- 
tion of  his  leisure,  but  suddenly  his  great  powers 


66  MY  HARVEST 

seemed  to  fail  him  with  a  snap,  and  after  that  came 
labour  and  sorrow  before  they  were  due  by  his 
count  of  years.  The  Times  gave  him  an  obituary 
column  :  the  world  at  large  seemed  hardly  aware 
of  his  loss.  It  was  the  system  of  anonymity  at  its 
worst.  For  the  better  part  of  half  a  century  his 
pen  had  influenced,  for  good  or  ill,  the  policy  of 
the  empire,  but  his  work  bore  no  signature,  and 
only  the  newspaper  offices,  and  the  Parliament 
men,  could  put  a  name  to  it.  For  multitudinous 
readers  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe,  he  was  hardly 
so  much  as  a  great  unknown,  since  this  implies  at 
least  the  knowledge  that  there  is  a  concrete  some- 
thing to  ignore.  In  France,  such  a  man  might 
easily  have  aspired  to  ministerial  honours,  or  to 
an  embassy,  and  he  could  not  possibly  have  failed 
of  his  Officer's  Cross.  As  it  was,  the  very  ruck  of 
the  music-hall  stage  would  have  eclipsed  him 
easily  in  notoriety,  while  the  cruel  conditions  under 
which  he  wrote  denied  him  fame. 

I  now  settled  down  to  my  Costermonger  articles, 
carrying  the  character  here,  there  and  everywhere 
in  a  comprehensive  glance  at  the  life  of  his  betters. 
He  found  his  way  into  the  Strangers'  Gallery  for 
a  night  in  Parliament,  then  in  the  turmoil  of  the 
new  Reform  debates.  He  even  drew  up  a  Reform 
Bill  of  his  own.  He  attended  the  great  Trades' 
Demonstration  of  1866  when  some  sixty  thousand 
working  men  marched  in  perfect  order  through  the 
West  End  ironically  saluting  the  Tory  clubs  as 
they  passed.  He  went  to  the  Derby  ;  he  dined 
with  the  Lord  Mayor  at  the  Mansion  House  ;  he 
ran  over  to  Calais  for  a  look  at  the  French,  in  a 


FLEET  STREET  67 

walking  tour  to  the  Belgian  frontier.  He  professed 
to  know  all  about  the  table  talk  at  one  of  the 
Greenwich  whitebait  dinners  of  the  Cabinet,  even 
then  in  the  period  of  their  decline.  He  said  his 
say  on  the  horrors  of  war  during  the  struggle 
between  Austria  and  Prussia,  on  the  Indian  famine, 
and  what  not.  The  articles  were  afterwards  re- 
published  in  book  form,  as  Mr.  Sprouts,  His 
Opinions,  with  a  grateful  dedication  to  Robert 
Coningsby  as  the-  only  begetter.  The  little  volume 
had  its  day,  and  then  deservedly  sank  into  oblivion. 
It  was  immature  to  the  last  degree,  but  it  is  still  of 
interest  to  the  writer  as  a  record  of  the  best  he 
could  do  at  that  time  in  the  criticism  of  life. 

A  further  interest  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  was 
in  the  Bohemian  note,  at  a  time  when  the  Bohemia 
of  the  Press  was  beginning  to  be  a  thing  of  the 
past.  The  institution  was  just  kept  going  by  a  few 
convivial  clubs  all  based  on  the  idea  that  the 
self-respecting  writer  was  bound  to  be  a  bit  of  a 
wastrel  in  his  private  hours.  With  most,  this  was 
no  more  than  lip  service  to  a  social  cult  in  its  dotage, 
and  it  was  consistent  with  the  decorum  of  the 
home  and  wholesome  family  life.  One  club  held 
its  meetings  in  the  Gothic  chamber  over  the  gate- 
way of  the  old  military  monastery  of  St.  John  of 
Jerusalem,  in  Clerkenwell.  Many  actors  were  of 
the  membership,  and  one  of  the  sights  for  visitors 
was  Marston,  a  fashionable  ghost  in  Hamlet, 
smoking  his  midnight  pipe  after  playing  in  the 
piece  with  Phelps  at  Sadler's  Wells.  Like  Mrs. 
Siddons  before  him,  he  ordered  his  very  refresh- 
ments in  a  sepulchral  tone.  Black  once  violated 


68  MY  HARVEST 

the  club  rule  of  secrecy  in  a  fancy  sketch  of  harm- 
less pleasantries.  There  was  a  Vagrants'  Club, 
with  its  profession  of  faith  in  a  club  song  of  which 
a  precious  fragment  still  remains  in  my  memory  : — 

I'm  a  Vagrant, 

Thou'rt  a  vagrant, 
Vagrants  too  are  he  and  she  : 

We  are  vagrants, 

Ye  are  vagrants, 

And  where  are  they  as  wouldn't  be  ? 
Three  groans  for  them — as  wouldn't  be. 

However,  we  contrived  to  believe  that  we  believed 
every  word  of  it,  till  the  last  note  of  the  chorus  had 
died  away. 

There  was  an  Arundel  Club  for  the  theatrical 
critics,  which  slowly  opened  one  eye  at  about 
midnight,  and  became  wide  awake  an  hour  or  so 
later  when  all  the  copy  was  in  the  printer's  hands. 
There  was  a  Circle  Club,  chiefly  for  Academy 
students,  with  Waterlow  Ouless  and  Buckman 
among  its  members.  And  there  was,  of  course, 
the  Savage  Club,  which  would  need  a  whole  book 
to  itself,  if  it  did  not  already  possess  it  in  the 
volume  from  the  pen  of  Mr.  Aaron  Watson. 

Most  of  them  merely  took  Bohemianism  as  a 
diversion  :  the  few  who  still  took  it  seriously  were 
much  to  be  pitied,  for  they  suffered  for  their  faith. 
Such  a  Bohemian,  dyed  in  the  wool,  I  remember 
going  to  see  in  the  limbo  of  one  of  the  sponging 
houses  to  which  our  old  comedy  owed  so  much. 
It  was  in  Cursitor  Street.  I  am  glad  I  did  not 
neglect  my  opportunity,  for  shortly  after  they  all 
died  the  death,  as  the  effect,  direct  or  indirect,  of 


FLEET  STREET  69 

the  Act  of  Parliament  abolishing  imprisonment 
for  debt.  Such  imprisonment  goes  on  all  the  same, 
with  a  difference,  and  that  is  quite  enough  for  a 
mealy-mouthed  generation.  Formerly  you  were 
imprisoned  for  not  paying  your  creditor  :  now  you 
suffer  for  not  obeying  the  Court  that  orders  you 
to  pay  him.  The  Court  determines  the  conditions 
of  settlement  according  to  its  view  of  your  means  : 
your  failure  to  comply  with  its  order  is  "  con- 
tempt." Hollo  way  Prison  still  swarms  with  debtors, 
but  they  are  there  under  another  name,  as  wanton 
and  wilful  contemners  of  the  law.  It  must  make 
all  the  difference  to  them  in  adding  to  the  enormity 
of  their  sense  of  guilt.  The  sponging  house  was 
a  relic  of  the  old  class  legislation  with  its  thousand 
and  one  discriminations  between  common  people 
and  their  betters.  If  you  had  absolutely  nothing, 
you  went  into  the  jail  for  debtors,  as  long  as  they 
cared  to  pay  for  keeping  you  there ;  if  you  could 
pay  your  way  for  awhile,  you  had  the  option  of  a 
sort  of  private  lodging-house  where  you  might 
receive  your  friends,  and  try  to  settle  matters 
before  final  committal  to  prison.  The  lodging- 
house  keeper,  as  a  bailiff,  was  also  your  jailer, 
responsible  for  your  safe  custody.  You  boarded 
with  him,  and  ate,  drank  and  smoked  your  full, 
all  at  famine  prices. 

My  friend  was  a  well-known  artist  of  the  humbler 
sort.  He  illustrated  the  published  music-hall  songs 
of  the  day,  with  portraits  of  the  singers  in  their 
habit  as  they  lived  in  the  glare  of  the  footlights. 
One  evening  he  missed  the  weekly  meeting  of  The 
Vagrants,  and  the  dismal  news  went  round  that 


70  MY  HARVEST 

he  had  been  taken  to  Cursitor  Street.  The  Club 
decreed  a  visit  of  sympathy,  and  next  day  I  was 
of  the  deputation.  Locks,  bolts  and  bars  flew 
asunder  to  admit  us,  and  then  shot  back  again  to 
make  us  sharers  of  his  captivity  till  we  took  our 
leave.  Two  or  three  days'  confinement,  without 
exercise,  and  almost  without  light  and  air,  had 
yellowed  him  to  the  prison  colour.  Much  of  the 
dirt  of  his  environment  was  supplied  gratis  by  the 
management,  but  his  foul  dressing-gown  was,  I 
believe,  a  luxury  at  charges.  He  essayed  a  smile 
on  our  entry,  and  croaked,  "  I'm  a  vagrant, 
thou'rt  a  vagrant,"  to  show  that  his  spirit  was 
unbroken,  but  somehow  it  seemed  to  come  from 
the  wrong  side  of  his  mouth. 

On  another  occasion  I  wished  our  chairman  at 
a  certain  club  a  cordial  '  good  night,'  after  a 
delightful  evening.  Twelve  hours  or  so  later  I 
had  unexpectedly  to  wish  him  '  good  morning  '  in 
the  less  bright  clime  of  Whitecross  Street  prison 
for  debt.  He  had  just  been  arrested  :  I  was  there 
only  as  a  visitor  in  quest  of  material  for  an  article 
on  the  approaching  demolition  of  the  jail.  It  was 
an  awkward  moment.  "  You  here  !  "  came  simul- 
taneously from  both  of  us.  "  Yes,  I'm  looking 
round,"  I  said,  not  knowing  how  to  better  it  on 
the  spur  of  the  moment.  He  reddened  to  the  roots 
of  his  hair,  and  turned  away. 

Yes,  Bohemia  was  dying — and  everywhere. 
Miirger  even  had  to  make  it  but  a  phase  in  the  life 
of  his  merry  men  on  their  way  to  a  career.  Who 
killed  its  Cock  Robin  in  our  colder  clime  ?  Some 
attribute  the  catastrophe  to  the  Time  spirit, 


FLEET  STREET  71 

others  to  suburban  trains.  One  famous  club  in 
London,  long  devoted  to  the  cult,  but  now  a 
model  of  all  the  virtues,  still  keeps  a  chartered 
libertine  of  Bohemia  on  its  list  of  members,  as 
a  sort  of  pet.  He,  and  he  alone,  may  break  every 
rule  of  the  institution  at  his  pleasure,  but  woe  to 
anybody  else  who  breaks  so  much  as  a  single  one. 
There  is  a  sort  of  vanity  in  the  culture  of  all  such 
relics  of  a  shady  past.  The  revivalists  of  two 
American  cities,  I  remember,  once  contended  for 
the  honour  of  having  brought  the  very  worst  of 
sinners  "  within  the  fold."  The  Lake  City  began 
it  by  injudicious  boasts  of  a  certain  wicked  man 
in  Chicago  as  the  wickedest  man  in  America.  The 
commercial  capital  immediately  set  up  an  ex- 
wicked  man  of  New  York  as  holding  the  record  for 
the  planet.  Other  cities  joined  to  make  it  a  sort 
of  four-handed  game,  and  the  respective  cham- 
pions entered  into  the  fray  with  becoming  spirit. 
The  Chicago  specimen  owned  to  wife-beating  as 
a  diversion  :  the  New  York  one  immediately 
trumped  with  having  been  the  death  of  his  mother, 
and  won  the  trick  and  the  rubber. 

One  of  the  last  Bohemians  of  my  acquaintance 
on  the  Press  was  a  young  Scotsman  who  had  been 
a  comrade  of  Black  in  Glasgow,  when  London  was 
merely  an  aspiration  for  both.  With  characteristic 
rashness  he  undertook  to  make  the  first  venture, 
and  to  examine  and  report.  He  came  and  soon 
thought  himself  able  to  assure  his  friend  that  it 
was  a  safe  thing.  He  was  premature,  but  he 
yearned  for  company,  and  he  had  actually  earned 
a  trifle  by  penny  dreadfuls  that  kept  him  going  for 


72  MY  HARVEST 

a  time.  Black  accordingly  started  but  not,  of 
course,  with  any  destinies  of  that  kind  in  view. 
The  other  was  at  the  railway  station  to  meet  him, 
and  carried  him  off  to  his  own  dingy  lodging,  in 
old  Sam  Johnson's  Bolt  Court,  for  refreshment. 
After  a  high  tea,  the  host  proposed  making  a  night 
of  it  to  celebrate  the  occasion.  Black  coldly 
declined,  and  drawing  a  short  story  from  his  wallet 
sat  down  to  finish  it  for  the  night's  post.  Their 
meeting  was  in  fact  but  a  parting  of  the  ways. 
The  host  finally  sank  into  the  humblest  offices  of 
the  Press,  with  the  infirmary  for  his  last  stage. 
I  make  no  imputation  of  sudden  desertion  or  neglect 
on  Black's  part;  the  other,  I  fear,  became  simply 
impossible  in  the  long  run.  His  visitor  was  soon 
on  the  flowing  tide  of  an  engagement  and  paying 
work. 

Even  Sala,  prince  of  Bohemians,  lived  to  mend 
his  ways.  He  began  as  a  primeval  "  Savage,"  he 
ended  at  the  Reform  Club,  immaculate  in  the 
smartness  of  the  day.  He  was  of  great  service  to 
that  institution  as  an  acknowledged  authority  on 
good  eating  and  drinking.  Wine  lists  had  no 
secret  for  him,  and  he  was  such  a  judge  of  cookery 
that  when  the  club  wanted  a  new  chef  he  was  sent 
to  Paris  in  solemn  mission  to  find  the  right  man. 
We  were  both  at  the  dinner  given  to  Dickens,  on 
his  second  visit  to  the  States  to  "  make  it  up  "  for 
American  Notes.  It  was  a  gathering  of  famous 
persons  of  the  time,  and  it  filled  the  great  hall  at 
the  Freemasons'  Tavern  to  the  full.  Bulwer  was 
in  the  chair,  and  for  other  figures,  now  seen  as 
in  a  dream,  we  had  Maclise  the  painter,  Henry 


FLEET  STREET  73 

Thompson  the  famous  surgeon,  Jacob  Omnium 
the  indefatigable  writer  of  letters  to  The  Times 
on  every  topic  under  the  sun,  to  say  nothing  of 
hundreds  that  have  faded  from  memory  as  nearly 
all  have  faded  from  life.  Praise  of  the  guest  of  the 
evening  was  of  course  on  every  tongue,  but  when 
it  came  to  the  item  of  his  services  to  the  public  as 
the  founder  of  Household  Words,  and  as  a  con- 
tributor of  the  best  to  its  pages,  Sala,  who  had 
been  perfectly  abstemious  and  alert  during  the 
evening,  as  though  awaiting  the  honourable  men- 
tion of  his  own  name,  began  to  dissent  with  an 
ominous  growl.  It  was  understood  to  signify  that 
the  best  in  that  periodical  was  from  his  own  pen. 
He  had  certainly  done  well  for  it,  with  many  an 
article  of  marked  brilliancy  and  charm.  But  the 
growl  was  disconcerting  for  all  that,  especially 
as  it  grew  deeper  and  deeper  till  it  seemed  to 
betoken  some  peculiarly  alarming  escape  from  the 
Zoo.  Friendly  keepers,  however,  were  happily  at 
hand,  to  persuade  him  to  compound  the  matter  by 
an  occasional  groan. 

For  all  that  he  was  a  notable  figure  of  the  day. 
The  hour  and  the  man  came  together  when  the 
Lawsons  resolved  on  the  great  venture  of  a  daily 
newspaper  at  a  penny.  Its  appeal  was  naturally 
to  the  million,  and  the  million  had  wants  and 
tastes  of  its  own.  Sala  found  the  note — omnis- 
cience, set  off  with  abundant  illustration,  and 
inexhaustible  fertility  of  quip  and  crank.  He 
became  the  literary  parent  of  all  the  young  lions  of 
The  Daily  Telegraph,  who  succeeded  each  other  in 
unbroken  line  until  they  had  made  the  fortune  of 


74  MY  HARVEST 

its  discerning  owner.  The  new  journalism  of  that 
epoch  had  come  to  town.  A  newer  now  reigns  in 
The  Daily  Mail,  but  The  Telegraph  has  known  how 
to  change  with  the  circumstances,  without  once 
failing  to  find  the  formula  for  success.  It  has 
tapped  new  sources  as  a  sort  of  family  paper  in 
excelsis  for  the  comfortable  classes.  Their  law  of 
life  is  the  avoidance  of  shock  either  to  mind  or 
body,  and  "  something  to  read  "  that  keeps  them 
at  once  calm  and  amused,  like  Buddhas  with  a 
sense  of  a  joke  in  public  affairs.  How  things  change, 
and,  notoriously,  how,  in  their  essence,  they  are 
ever  the  same. 

About  this  time  I  settled  myself  in  chambers  as 
being  more  in  keeping  with  the  claims  of  my  new 
life.  I  took  two  sky  parlours  in  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields,  another  bit  of  old  London  in  harmony  with 
all  my  most  pleasurable  associations,  and  I  put 
my  name  on  the  door.  I  came  and  went  as  I 
pleased,  with  no  troublesome  formality  of  knock 
or  ring  :  and  at  night  time  I  had  the  roomy,  gloomy 
old  building  all  to  myself,  with  the  exception  of  the 
housekeeper  in  the  basement — ancient  of  days  like 
the  rest.  It  was  on  the  same  side  as  the  chambers 
of  the  unfortunate  Mr.  Tulkinghorn  ;  and  his  fate 
somehow  gave  it  an  added  charm.  One  could  never 
tell  what  might  not  be  happening  to  some  successor 
of  his  in  the  same  set,  as  one  sat  in  the  small  hours 
of  the  morning,  browsing  on  Bleak  House,  or  study- 
ing the  dramatists  of  the  Restoration  in  their 
habitat.  My  father  now  knew  of  the  change  in  my 
mode  of  life,  and  accepted  it,  without  giving  it  his 
formal  sanction.  He  treated  all  my  other  activities 


FLEET  STREET  75 

in  the  same  way,  never  once,  so  far  as  I  know,  saw 
article  or  book  of  my  doing,  and  certainly  never 
alluded  to  either  in  any  shape  or  way.  But  he 
was  a  good  father  still,  and  we  remained  the  best 
of  friends,  while  keeping  this  open  secret  of  silence 
between  us  to  the  end  of  his  days. 


CHAPTER  VI 
PARIS  AGAIN 

MY  next  commission  for  the  paper  was  al- 
together to  my  liking — Paris  for  the  ex- 
hibition of  1867.  It  was  the  most  impressive  of 
all  the  exhibitions  in  France,  perhaps  also  in  the 
whole  world.  Others  had  larger  acreage  ;  and  I 
am  especially  not  unaware  of  the  claims  of 
Chicago  both  in  that  and  in  beauty.  But  this 
one  synchronized  with  world-shaking  events.  The 
empire,  while  still  making  a  brave  show  of  it, 
was  really  worm-eaten  at  the  core.  The  persistent 
pounding  of  the  opposition  had  at  last  told  on 
the  stability  of  the  throne.  The  "  crowning  of  the 
edifice "  with  liberal  institutions  was  already 
marked  for  failure.  Without,  there  was  the  terrible 
menace  of  the  United  States  as  the  champion  of 
Mexico.  The  Civil  War  was  over,  but  the  land 
swarmed  with  hardy  veterans  ready  to  back  the 
demand  for  the  withdrawal  of  the  French  garrison. 
Prussia  had  succeeded  France  as  the  friend  in  need 
of  Italian  independence,  and  France  herself  had 
to  become  a  party  to  the  Austrian  cession  of 
Venetia,  doubly  humiliating  because  Bismarck  had 
openly  rejected  her  claim  to  territorial  compensa- 
tion. In  one  hemisphere  or  the  other,  France 
was  threatened  by  great  powers,  the  coming 

76 


PARIS  AGAIN  77 

"  Germany  "  and  the  restored  Union  in  full  stride. 
The  States  were  the  first  to  prevail  :  Maximilian 
was  left  to  his  fate. 

The  exhibition  was  still  in  mid  course  when  the 
tragedy  of  Queretaro  came  as  an  omen  for  the 
eyes  of  all.  Up  to  that  time  the  crowd  was  still 
content  to  take  Napoleon  III  at  his  own  valuation. 
With  all  the  world  dancing  attendance  at  his 
monster  garden  party,  it  was  hard  to  believe  that 
he  was  not  doing  very  well,  for,  within  the  ring 
fence  of  the  Champ-de-Mars,  there  was  everything 
to  charm  the  senses  and  the  mind.  As  a  sup- 
plementary wonder,  the  glittering  show  at  court 
included  some  of  the  greatest  monarchs  and 
statesmen  of  the  world — the  King  of  Prussia 
among  them  and  Moltke  as  the  intelligent  tourist 
looking  on.  Even  this  was  not  solely  for  the 
favoured  few  :  the  others  had  their  share  of  sight- 
seeing from  the  kerbstone.  When  you  left  the 
Champ-de-Mars  you  went  into  the  Champs 
Ely  sees  or  the  Bois,  for  a  promenade  of  princely 
splendours  that  seemed  to  have  come  straight  out 
of  fairyland.  Yet  in  three  years  or  so  from  that 
time  the  Napoleons  were  in  captivity  or  in  exile, 
and  their  palace  was  a  heap  of  smouldering 
ruins. 

But  it  was  good  going  while  it  went.  I  associate 
it  with  long  lingering  summer  afternoons  in  which 
the  dust  was  golden  haze,  and  the  elliptical  galleries 
one  within  the  other,  filled  with  the  wonders  of 
the  world,  were  a  new  variety  of  Aladdin's  palace. 
It  was  the  Arabian  Nights  in  the  very  sharpness  of 
the  contrasts,  stately  achievements  in  architecture 


78  MY  HARVEST 

if  only  in  stucco,  flanked  by  pitches  for  wizards 
and  conjurors.  The  outermost  ring  was  reserved 
for  the  refreshment  booths  of  all  nations,  some  of 
their  staffs  distinctly  home  made,  with  only  a 
costume  to  keep  them  in  character — Turegs  from 
the  Place  Pigalle,  Arabs  from  Montmartre.  I 
remember  a  Tunisian  cafe  in  charge  of  a  pair  of 
turbaned  Turks,  undoubtedly  genuine  as  being 
dyed  by  the  sun  instead  of  burnt  cork,  and  guard- 
ing a  bevy  of  odalisques  who  were  to  be  regarded 
by  the  eye  of  faith  as  Circassian  slaves,  exquisitely 
trousered  in  satin  and  with  short  jackets  to  match. 
One  of  these  presently  took  up  a  guitar  to  sing, 
as  though  to  soothe  her  captivity.  We  expected 
something  from  the  Persian  at  the  very  least  :  all 
we  had — foreign  as  it  still  might  be  to  most  of  the 
audience — was  to  my  trained  ear  nothing  in  the 
world  but,  "  Where  are  you  going,  my  pretty 
maid  ?  "  rendered  in  the  twang  of  the  Cockney 
gutter. 

"  What  lingo  do  you  call  that  ?  "  I  said  to  the 
waiter  as  he  flashed  past. — "n'sais-pas  M'sieu:  du 
Tunisien,  hein  ! — '  Un  bock,  bourn  ! '  I  kept  the 
professional  secret  :  at  any  rate  she  was  a  com- 
patriot. 

Then  there  was  a  Chinese  giant  with  his  Chinese 
wife  (small-footed),  and  a  Tartar  dwarf  for  comic 
relief.  The  showman,  touched  by  my  intelligent 
curiosity,  invited  me  to  lunch  with  them  in  private. 
Ah,  if  more  luncheon  parties  were  like  that !  It 
was  so  delightfully  unconventional ;  all  real,  and 
unrehearsed,  especially  by  the  dwarf.  As  the  old 
lady  said  during  the  Bulgarian  massacres  "  they 


PARIS  AGAIN  79 

don't  call  'em  Turks  for  nothing."  A  Tartar  he 
was,  to  be  sure,  with  the  years  of  manhood,  but 
the  manners  of  a  spoiled  child,  and  as  beseemed 
his  size,  the  most  aggressive  person  it  has  ever 
been  my  lot  to  meet  at  the  board  of  hospitality. 
It  was  one  of  his  bad  days,  as  our  host  explained. 
He  snatched  at  the  viands  ;  he  screamed  insolent 
defiance  at  the  giant,  and  when  seized  by  the 
gullet  in  remonstrance  he  could  still  foam  at  the 
mouth.  Then,  something  going  wrong  in  the 
attempt  to  render  one  of  his  outlandish  dishes 
in  the  medium  of  French  cookery,  he  began  to 
flourish  a  table  knife  with  intent,  till  he  was  carried 
howling  from  the  room,  blaspheming  in  gutturals 
that  made  the  blood  run  cold. 

Regarding  him  as  a  kind  of  superfluous  hors 
(Tceuvre,  I  found  the  rest  of  the  entertainment 
extremely  interesting.  From  first  to  last  the  small- 
footed  lady  was  a  problem  study  in  speechless 
disgust  with  things  in  general,  not  without  some- 
thing to  show  for  it — as  I  learned  when  my  host 
obligingly  gave  me  her  story. 

"  You  see,  I  picked  up  Chang — that  was  the 
giant's  name — and  the  little  'un  at  Canton,  and 
we  were  almost  ready  to  get  aboard  when  some- 
body suggested  that,  to  make  the  whole  show 
absolutely  unique,  we  ought  to  have  a  small- 
footed  lady.  No  sooner  said  than  done.  I 
advanced  the  giant  the  needful  for  a  wedding 
present,  and  told  him  to  get  married  at  once.  He 
shook  his  head,  and  said  he  was  only  making  the 
tour  to  get  enough  cash  to  wed  the  girl  of  his  choice. 
4  As  many  as  you  please,  but  we  must  have  this 


80  MY  HARVEST 

one  for  the  gate-money.'  He  didn't  like  it,  I 
could  see  that ;  but  he  took  it  as  part  of  the  day's 
work,  and  set  out  to  go  a-courting  in  the  Chinese 
way. 

"  It  was  pretty  simple.  He  soon  found  a  Chinese 
father  who  was  ready  for  a  deal ;  and  after  com- 
pliments, but  without  saying  a  word  about  the 
marriage,  begged  his  acceptance  of  a  friendly  gift. 
The  parent  was  profuse  in  acknowledgments,  and 
asked  him  if  there  was  anything  he  could  offer  in 
return.  'You  have  a  daughter,'  said  the  wooer; 
4  may  I  ask  if  she  has  a  small  foot  ?  '  '  That  is 
so,'  returned  the  parent  with  modest  pride  ;  '  our 
family  has  seen  better  days.'  '  I  want  a  wife,' 
said  the  giant.  '  Why  certainly,'  replied  the  other, 
4  with  all  the  pleasure  in  life.'  c  Might  I  be  per- 
mitted to  see  the  foot  in  advance,'  said  the  cautious 
buyer  ;  '  not,  of  course,  that  I  doubt  your  word.' 
The  girl  was  brought  in.  She  was  veiled,  but  that 
didn't  matter  :  any  face  would  do.  The  parent 
explained  the  situation,  and  she  lifted  the  hem  of 
her  robe  and  disclosed  the  deformity  in  all  its 
perfection.  In  a  few  hours,  we  were  all  on  our 
way  to  Paris  for  the  honeymoon." 

From  that  moment,  it  seems,  or  at  any  rate, 
as  soon  as  they  reached  their  destination,  the  poor 
thing's  foot  was  the  curse  of  her  life.  The  show 
was  crowded  ;  and  all  for  the  sake  of  the  small- 
footed  lady  as  the  principal  item.  The  giant 
became  a  mere  side  show,  though  he  did  a  fair 
trade  in  selling  his  signature  at  half  a  franc.  The 
dwarf  fared  somewhat  better,  by  reason  of  his 
shape — all  breadth  without  length — and  of  his 


PARIS  AGAIN  81 

fiendish  ugliness  as  of  a  porcelain  monster  realized 
in  flesh  and  blood.  The  bride  had  to  lift  the  hem 
of  her  garment,  let  us  say  some  one  or  two  or  three 
hundred  times  a  day,  on  the  requisition  of  any 
visitor  to  the  show.  She  did  it  without  a  word  of 
protest,  but  evidently  in  a  smoulder  of  sullen 
wrath  ;  and  her  misery  of  degradation,  for  so  I 
understood  it,  went  on  till  closing  time.  The 
women,  in  their  innocence  of  the  state  of  her  feelings, 
were  the  worst  offenders.  A  few  tried  to  pinch 
the  foot,  but  at  that  she  flamed  up,  and  was  only 
to  be  appeased  by  a  placard  in  several  tongues  : 
"Please  don't  touch." 

The  day  after  the  luncheon,  on  the  strength  of 
my  intimacies  behind  the  scenes,  I  undertook  to 
pilot  a  party  to  the  show,  and  advanced  briskly  to 
the  Chinese  lady  to  offer  my  compliments.  She 
had  remained  utterly  silent  during  the  meal,  so 
I  now  ventured  on:  "Do  you  speak  English?" 
by  way  of  an  opening.  She  spoke  enough  for  me  : 
"  You  know  I  no  spikkie  you  naughty  mans  " 
was  all  I  got  for  my  pains.  With  the  possible 
exception  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon,  she  was  per- 
haps the  only  person  in  Paris  just  then  who  wished 
the  whole  exhibition  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea. 
For  her,  there  was  a  double  degradation  in  the 
unveiling  of  her  shoe  and  the  unveiling  of  her  face. 
It  was  a  comely  face,  in  its  contours,  though 
rather  too  much  like  a  portrait  painted  on  an 


Everybody  had  to  come  to  Paris  for  this  festival  : 
the  appeal  was  almost  as  world-wide  as  that  of  1851. 
I  met  many  persons  of  note  at  the  house  of  the 


82  MY  HARVEST 

correspondent  of  my  paper.  He  held  the  strange 
office  of  reader  for  the  censor,  in  one  of  the  minis- 
tries :  it  was  his  business  to  look  through  the 
English  journals,  as  they  arrived  by  the  morning 
mail,  and  to  blue  pencil  them  for  anything  that 
might  be  of  interest  for  the  Government.  Occa- 
sionally he  had  to  mark  for  an  attack  on  the 
Imperial  system.  In  this  case,  the  whole  issue  had 
to  suffer  the  humiliation  of  the  blacking  brush. 
The  offending  passage  was  obliterated  by  some 
mechanical  process  that  rendered  it  perfectly 
illegible.  And  this  in  the  cite  lumiere !  These 
grotesque  practices  survive  in  some  parts,  as  signs 
of  certain  strata  of  the  growth  of  civilization  and 
of  common  sense.  In  Petrograd,  for  instance,  you 
ask  for  your  English  paper  at  the  hotel,  and  probably 
receive  it  with  its  news  of  Russia  and  its  leader  all 
blotched  with  these  hideous  disfigurements. 

Our  correspondent  was  a  man  of  letters,  author 
of  a  book  or  two,  and  over  and  above  that,  one 
of  the  best  fellows  in  the  world.  He  had  lived 
so  long  in  Paris  that  in  manners,  and  even  in 
speech,  he  was  more  than  half  a  Frenchman.  He 
cherished  interesting  superstitions,  one  of  them  a 
relic  of  the  practice  of  divination  by  birds.  In 
emergencies,  he  was  wont  to  consult  a  canary  in 
his  study  for  the  luck  of  the  issue.  It  was  a  solemn 
rite.  He  coaxed  the  creature  to  his  work  with  the 
promise  of  a  lump  of  sugar,  and  immediately 
received  a  tiny  packet  picked  at  random  from  a 
store  in  the  cage.  This  contained  the  message  of 
the  oracle.  Like  other  deliverances  of  the  same 
order,  all  depended  on  the  interpretation  ;  and 


PARIS  AGAIN  83 

in  this  way  it  generally  presaged  the  luck  he  desired. 
The  custom  is  still  widespread  in  Italy,  the  store- 
house and  museum  of  so  many  of  the  beliefs  of 
the  race.  Until  quite  a  few  years  ago  it  flourished 
in  London,  as  one  of  the  minor  industries  of  Hatton 
Garden.  The  parchment-skinned  crone,  too  old 
to  drag  the  organ,  could  still  earn  a  trifle  at  the 
street  corner  with  her  divining  bird. 

The  correspondence  was  conducted  on  a  system 
of  marital  co-operation.  The  wife  wrote  the  daily 
letter  from  dictation,  as  to  the  politics ;  and, 
as  to  the  social  liTe,  collected  the  daily  gossip 
of  the  Imperial  fetes  from  friends  who  had  the 
entry  at  the  Tuileries.  She  was  a  sure  guide 
in  regard  to  the  toilettes  of  the  Empress,  and 
the  most  successful  creations  of  Worth.  And  this 
for  a  democratic  sheet  !  but  one  touch  of  fashion 
makes  the  whole  world  kin.  She  took  incredible 
pains  with  it,  rising  sometimes  with  the  sun  to 
catch  a  reigning  beauty  in  bed,  for  the  details  of 
last  night's  ball. 

At  this  house  I  met  Ouida,  who  had  brought 
letters  of  introduction.  It  was  the  Ouida  of  the 
days  of  youth,  with  everything  about  her  the 
perfection  of  daintiness,  excepting  perhaps  the 
rather  too  massive  head  which  was  the  penalty 
she  paid  for  her  power  with  the  pen.  Her 
characteristic  pose  was  not  wanting — a  hand  laid 
with  careful  carelessness  on  the  arm  of  the  sofa, 
for  the  benefit  of  the  company.  Her  conversation 
was  like  her  attitude,  another  study  in  effects, 
this  time  in  aristocratic  sympathies.  Her  heroes 
of  the  moment  were  the  leaders  of  the  South  in 


84  MY  HARVEST 

the  American  Civil  War,  and  in  particular  General 
Breckinridge.  She  gave  him  glowing,  but  still 
condescending  praise,  such  as  might  have  come 
from  a  partisan  goddess  watching  the  day's  work 
on  the  plain  of  Troy. 

The  dominant  ideas  of  every  period  are  usually 
reflected  in  its  romance,  without  necessarily  taking 
their  rise  in  it.  The  novelist  follows  the  thinker 
in  rendering  them  into  the  terms  of  life.  The 
sentimentalizing  heroes  of  Bulwer's  middle  period 
marked  our  introduction  to  German  studies  under 
the  influence  of  Carlyle.  In  Ouida's  youth  we 
began  to  change  all  this,  at  the  bidding  of  Dr. 
Dasent  in  his  translations  from  the  Norse,  all  the 
more  readily  because  this  implied  a  new  compli- 
ment to  our  noble  selves.  The  strong  man  of  the 
Sagas,  suitably  arranged  for  the  drawing-room  and 
the  tea-table,  began  to  stalk  through  our  fiction 
with  Mr.  Rochester. 

Ouida  followed  suit.  It  was  the  same  sort  of  hero, 
but  with  a  dash  of  scent  in  peace  time  to  heighten 
the  effect  of  his  Berserker  rage  in  war  or  the 
chase.  Her  great  rival  was  a  writer  known  as 
The  Author  of  Guy  Livingstone,,  a  character  gener- 
ally and  genially  engaged  in  pulverizing  everyone 
who  came  in  his  way.  He  grew  tiresome  in  due 
course,  only  to  return  to  favour  in  our  day  as  the 
lawless  superman  of  the  existing  school  retouched 
to  harmonize  him  with  Nietzschean  theories  of  a 
coming  race.  In  the  interval,  it  was  poor  Ouida's 
fate  to  suffer  eclipse  at  the  hands  of  Rhoda 
Broughton  who  was  able  to  supply  a  new  utility 
man  for  the  drama  of  love. 


PARIS  AGAIN  85 

Ouida  was  naturally  much  interested  in  her 
host,  a  man  of  family,  and  of  air  and  elegance  to 
match.  He  seemed,  and  I  believe  was,  uncon- 
scious of  the  honour,  but  his  wife  took  care  that 
he  should  not  remain  so.  One  day,  when  he  was 
hard  at  work  on  his  letter,  she  stole  softly  into  his 
study,  and  dropping  a  photograph  of  the  charmer 
on  his  desk,  as  quietly  withdrew. 

"  What  on  earth's  that  for  ?  ':I  came  in  irate 
tones  from  the  desk.  "  Inspiration,  dear,"  in  dulcet 
tones  from  the  door. 

Poor  fellow  !  he  was  one  of  the  victims  of  the 
siege.  A  serious  accident  prevented  him  from 
leaving  the  city  before  the  gates  were  closed,  and 
the  hardships  and  the  want  of  proper  nourishment 
did  the  rest.  The  devoted  wife  used  afterwards 
to  relate,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  how  hard  set  she 
was  to  find  dainties  for  him.  At  last,  I  believe, 
in  her  desperation,  she  had  to  fall  back  on  the 
canary.  One  pictures  the  little  divining  bird,  in 
the  slackness  of  business,  pecking  omens  from 
habit  and  all  unconsciously  drawing  his  own. 

As  I  have  said,  it  was  good  going  while  it  lasted. 
The  Empress  was  in  the  perfection  of  her  beauty  ; 
and  the  charm  of  mind  was  supplied  in  the  salons 
of  the  Emperor's  cousin,  the  Princess  Mathilde, 
who  had  Flaubert,  Taine,  Dumas  fils,  About,  and 
Octave  Feuillet  in  her  little  court.  She  was  no 
niggard  of  these  treasures,  for  sometimes,  as 
women  do  with  their  fineries,  she  lent  one  to  her 
other  good  cousin,  by  marriage,  on  the  throne. 

Octave  Feuillet,  especially,  was  passed  on  to 
Eugenie  in  this  way — perhaps  as  the  safest  of  the 


86  MY  HARVEST 

set  for  a  person  holding  the  Imperial  position. 
His  work  was  a  blend  of  the  risky  situation  and 
the  moral  reproof.  Le  Roman  (Tun  jeune  Homme 
Pauvre,  which  placed  him,  overdid  the  moral  in 
being  somewhat  superfluously  correct,  but  he  soon 
made  good  with  Monsieur  de  Camors,  the  best 
example  in  his  matured  style.  Monsieur  was  of 
those  who  are  not  a  bit  better  than  they  should 
be,  but  he  compensated  by  giving  the  heroine  to 
understand  that  she  was  in  the  same  plight.  The 
indispensable  touch  of  impropriety  was  still  there, 
but  it  was  impropriety  on  the  stool  of  repentance, 
and  the  situation  was  saved  to  ethical  ends.  Both 
are  hard  reading  now,  the  first  especially  as  an 
impossible  attempt  to  combine  priggishness  with 
fire.  The  other  may  still  survive,  as  family  reading 
tempered  by  the  lock  and  key  in  the  interest  of  the 
young  person.  It  served  to  give  the  author  his 
label  as  the  "  Musset  of  families." 

The  Princess  could  afford  to  choose  her  stars  for 
their  brightness,  and  for  that  alone.  As  a  matter 
of  personal  taste  she  drew  the  line  at  Republicans, 
and  lost  Sainte-Beuve  in  consequence,  but  with 
Taine  and  Renan  in  reserve,  she  was  able  to  bear 
her  lot  with  fortitude. 

The  Princess  of  Metternich,  wife  of  the  Austrian 
Ambassador,  was  common  to  both  circles.  She 
was  the  enfant  terrible  of  the  Tuileries.  Her 
private  theatricals  were  a  longing  for  all  who  had 
not  the  privilege  of  admission.  Her  note  was  the 
audacity  of  the  music-hall,  combined  with  the 
refinement  of  exalted  station,  the  merry  rattle  at 
one  moment,  with  the  possibility  of  a  quick  change 


PARIS  AGAIN  87 

in  difficulties  to  the  grande  dame.  Only  she  could 
have  ventured  to  call  the  greatest  of  the  Roths- 
childs her  "  domestic  Jew,"  without  any  fear  of 
the  consequences.  The  Italian  Countess  of  Cas- 
tiglione,  who  made  her  debut  much  in  the  same 
way,  had  the  charm  of  beauty  with  a  certain  dash 
that  was  her  substitute  for  wit.  But  when  her 
looks  faded,  and  other  disappointments  came,  she 
withdrew  in  a  kind  of  horror  from  the  world. 
Madame  de  Pourtales,  and  Madame  de  Rattazzi 
helped  to  make  things  hum. 

The  American  Dr.  Evans,  dentist  to  the  court, 
ought  not  to  be  overlooked  in  a  survey  of  the 
social  forces  of  the  hour.  His  illustrious  patients 
necessarily  opened  their  mouths  freely  to  him, 
and  he  learnt  many  a  secret  which  he  was  able 
to  turn  to  account  in  the  advancement  of  his 
private  fortunes,  though  in  no  corrupt  way.  He 
heard  betimes,  for  instance,  of  the  projected 
Avenue  of  the  Empress,  and  bought  up  the  ram- 
shackle properties  on  the  line  of  route  to  resell 
at  enormous  profit  when  the  time  came.  One  of 
the  vainest  of  men,  he  provided  his  own  statue 
for  his  native  city.  It  was  a  sort  of  co-operative 
scheme  :  he  supplied  the  statue,  and  the  munici- 
pality supplied  the  site.  With  all  this  he  could 
be  a  good  friend  in  the  hour  of  need.  As  every- 
body knows,  he  came  in  very  handy  indeed  when 
the  Empress  had  to  escape  from  the  Tuileries 
during  the  disasters  of  the  war.  Her  wretched 
servants  were  plundering  the  palace  as  she  slipped 
out  by  a  side  door. 

But  this  was  all  to  come  ;    and  what  a  time  it 


88  MY  HARVEST 

was  when  the  "  crowned  heads  of  Europe  "  were 
dropping  in  for  the  exhibition  one  by  one,  or  as 
often  as  not  two  at  a  time.  The  Tsar  and  the 
King  of  Prussia  overlapped  in  this  way.  The 
Prussians  had  thoughtfully  sent  one  of  their  biggest 
guns  to  the  show,  and  I  daresay  it  found  its  way 
back  a  second  time,  for  use,  when  Paris  lay  at 
the  mercy  of  their  siege  artillery  on  the  adjacent 
heights.  The  thrifty  invaders  might  have  saved 
money  by  warehousing  it  for  their  return. 

The  fun  was  fast  and  furious.  One  of  my 
recollections  is  of  a  grand  dinner  given  by  Emile 
de  Girardin  to  the  correspondents  of  the  foreign 
papers,  Whitehouse  of  The  Daily  Telegraph  among 
them.  He  was  a  "  feature  "  in  his  solemn  affecta- 
tions, a  kind  of  Malvolio  rarely  wanting  in  the 
austere  regard  of  control.  He  seemed  to  be  on 
the  most  confidential  terms  with  the  Emperor,  and 
when  he  told  us  that  His  Majesty  had  driven  out 
yesterday  and  enjoyed  his  dinner  on  his  return, 
we  were  able  to  feel  well  informed.  In  the  office, 
I  believe,  he  was  cherished,  as  a  model  for  touch, 
by  young  lions  in  the  'prentice  stage. 

Marie  Roze,  then  in  the  plenitude  of  her  beauty 
and  charm,  sang  to  us — a  never-to-be-forgotten 
night. 

And,  for  the  public  scene,  Schneider  if  you 
please,  and  Theresa,  not  to  speak  of  "  La  Belle 
Ernestine,"  shepherdess  and  innkeeper  at  Etretat, 
then  in  course  of  discovery  by  Alphonse  Karr. 
How  focus  it,  except  as  a  Cubist  study  in  confusions 
with  no  focus  at  all.  Seen  in  this  perspective  of 
years  it  reminds  one  of  those  compositions  in  the 


PARIS  AGAIN  89 

confectioners'  shops — pigmies  of  highly  soluble  sugar 
footing  it  with  much  confidence  on  an  earth-crust 
of  the  same. 

On  this  second  visit,  I  lived  for  awhile  in  the 
Batignolles.  For  me  there  is  something  classic  in 
the  simple  and  wholesome  freedom  of  that  district 
from  all  the  affectations  of  style.  It  is  for  quite 
humble,  if  not  exactly  vulgar  people — little  em- 
ployees eking  out  a  modest  wage,  third-rate  actors 
playing  in  third-rate  pieces,  in  a  theatre  to  match. 
The  man  who  cobbles  your  shoes  in  the  daytime, 
may  at  night  be  a  nobleman  of  drama  with  a  small 
speaking  part.  It  is,  or  at  any  rate  was  then, 
intimate,  familiar,  a  bit  dirty  but  snug,  though  at 
smug  it  drew  the  line.  It  had  little  back  gardens, 
not  without  trees,  in  lieu  of  a  stony  cour,  little 
ball-rooms  in  which  you  entered  free,  and  paid  a 
sou  every  time  you  danced,  little  restaurants  where 
you  dined  at  fabulously  moderate  prices  on  the 
understanding  of  no  questions  asked  as  to  origins. 
Its  people  were  a  vast  family,  with  little  civilities, 
or  at  times  little  quarrels  for  their  family  tie  :  the 
porter's  lodge  was  the  clearing-house  for  the  news 
of  the  whole  quarter. 

I  used  to  buy  my  paper  of  an  old  lady  who  kept 
a  small  stationer's  shop,  and  who  was  occasionally 
assisted  by  a  young  one  who  kept  the  books. 
Quiet  and  soft-spoken  this  last,  and  timid  till 
she  came  to  know  you  well  :  then  a  chatterbox 
of  the  gentler  sort.  She  got  her  living,  such  as  it 
was,  by  giving  lessons  in  something  or  other,  taking 
her  wages  at  the  stationer's  in  the  run  of  all  the 
literature,  periodical  and  other,  of  the  stock-in-trade. 


90  MY  HARVEST 

At  rare  intervals  she  gave  a  select  tea  party 
in  the  garden  of  her  modest  lodging  hard  by,  and 
devoured  her  own  refreshments  in  a  way  that 
suggested  short  commons  as  her  normal  fare. 

I  lost  sight  of  her  when  I  lost  sight  of  Paris, 
which  happened  for  that  occasion  when  I  was 
recalled  at  the  close  of  the  exhibition.  This  led 
to  my  missing  the  siege  and  the  Commune  as 
things  seen — a  great  loss.  But  one  day,  long  after 
my  return,  while  toying  with  a  French  paper  in  a 
cafe  in  Soho,  I  read  her  name.  She  was  bracketed 
with  the  most  notorious  of  the  petroleuses  who 
helped  to  set  the  city  on  fire  when  the  insurgents 
reached  their  last  ditch  in  the  graveyard  of  Mont- 
martre.  Most  of  them  were  caught  black-handed 
and  fell  under  the  rifles  or  the  bayonets  of  the 
soldiery  without  distinction  of  sex.  In  regard  to 
this  one,  the  paper  could  only  express  a  pious  hope 
that,  if  still  at  large,  she  might  soon  have  her 
appropriate  reward. 

I  never  heard  of  her  again. 

Many  as  gentle  as  she  went  mad  under  the 
privations  of  the  siege  and  the  excitement  of  the 
insurrection,  and  whether  dead  or  alive,  when  it 
was  all  over,  vanished  into  an  obscurity  equal  to 
the  night  of  the  grave.  The  latter  would  have 
made  shorter  work  of  it  for  one  so  sorely  tried. 
She  craved  for  affection  as  a  birthright,  and  life 
had  not  been  "  nice  "  to  her  in  that  respect.  I 
never  could  understand  why  it  was  not :  she  was 
so  happily  endowed  with  likeable  faults.  "  Why 
did  you  make  me  hate  you  ?  "  might  have  been 
the  catchword  of  her  swan's  song. 


PARIS  AGAIN  91 

Presently  I  removed  to  the  Latin  quarter,  for 
a  change  ;  and  other  episodes  of  the  same  interest- 
ing quality  were  not  wanting.  The  hotel  was  a 
hotch-potch  of  students,  and  foreigners  more  or 
less  of  that  standing,  from  all  parts  of  the  world. 
One  of  these  was  a  young  German — in  looks  a 
sort  of  St.  Michael,  blue-eyed,  and  blond-haired 
as  with  a  nimbus,  and  disabled  by  a  swelling  on 
the  knee  due,  I  should  say,  to  his  perambulations 
of  the  city  in  search  of  omniscience.  Seeing  how 
it  was  with  him,  a  French  lad  from  one  of  the 
hospitals  immediately  took  him  in  charge  as  doctor 
and  nurse,  and  looked  after  him  like  a  brother, 
pestering  his  own  professors  in  daily  consultations 
till  he  pulled  his  patient  through.  I  have  often 
wondered  whether  they  afterwards  encountered  as 
conscripts  at  Gravelotte  or  Sedan.  It  would  have 
been  only  an  additional  touch  of  the  colour  of  life. 

But  this  again  was  for  the  future ;  and  the 
point  is  that,  splendours  or  miseries,  good  hap  or 
bad,  they  were  all,  in  some  curious  way,  part  of 
the  revel.  The  revel  was  at  its  best  one  beautiful 
day  towards  the  end  of  June  when,  as  I  noticed, 
the  Emperor,  returning  from  a  drive,  sat  bunched 
up  in  his  carriage  as  with  sheer  worry.  The  news 
had  come  that  his  puppet  Maximilian  had  fallen 
under  the  rifles  of  Mexican  rebels,  with  the  whole 
military  power  of  France  unable  to  lift  a  hand  to 
save  him.  It  crowned  only  the  edifice  of  his 
blunders,  and  it  broke  his  spell.  No  wonder : 
think  of  trying  to  govern  a  quick-witted  people 
as,  in  mid-nineteenth  century,  he  had  tried  to 
govern  the  French. 


92  MY  HARVEST 

"  I'll  go  to  hell  with  anybody,"  roared  the 
skipper  in  the  storm,  as  he  kicked  the  incom- 
petent steersman  from  the  tiller  ;  "  but  I  don't 
want  to  go  looking  foolish."  A  Napoleon,  bearing 
a  sceptre  tipped  with  a  blacking  brush,  had  that 
air. 


CHAPTER  VII 
INTERVIEWING 

MY  next  foreign  mission  was  Geneva,  for  the 
Alabama  arbitration.  I  had  left  The  Star. 
Justin  McCarthy  had  resigned  the  editorship  to 
go  to  the  States  on  a  lecturing  and  writing  tour, 
and  John  Morley  had  taken  his  place.  He  was 
the  latest  portent  in  the  Radical  journalism  of 
that  day,  a  thinker,  and  to  some  extent  a  man 
of  action,  tempered  with  caution  by  the  considera- 
tion that  he  might  one  day  have  to  make  good  his 
words  as  a  critic  in  politics  by  his  deeds  as  a  states- 
man. This  kept  him  cool,  if  also  at  times  somewhat 
cold,  on  the  surface,  though  there  was  fire  enough 
within.  He  has  excelled  in  both  parts  ;  and  of 
how  few  can  we  say  the  same  thing. 

He  was  not  happy  at  The  Star.  He  had  been 
called  in  too  late  :  the  paper  was  in  extremis.  It 
had  paid  the  penalty  of  its  fidelity  to  the  North  in 
the  American  Civil  War  :  heart  failure  induced  by 
defective  circulation  might  have  been  the  verdict, 
if  the  matter  had  come  before  a  Coroner's  court. 
But  it  had  done  its  work  in  helping  to  save  England 
from  the  blunder  of  an  alliance  with  the  slave 
power. 

We  seemed  perilously  near  that  alliance  when 
Palmerston  poured  his  ten  thousand  men  into 

93 


94  MY  HARVEST 

Canada  to  enforce  the  just  demand  for  the  release 
of  the  Confederate  Commissioners,  captured  on  the 
high  seas  when  they  were  under  the  protection  of 
the  British  flag.  It  was  a  spirited  stroke  of  policy, 
but  it  had  some  curious  results.  The  five  figures 
of  our  expeditionary  force  began  rapidly  to  dwindle 
to  four  as  soon  as  it  reached  its  destination.  The 
North  wanted  recruits  ;  the  British  soldier  wanted 
better  pay ;  and  knowing  that  it  awaited  him 
on  the  other  side  of  the  frontier,  he  deserted 
wholesale  and  took  service  under  the  Stars  and 
Stripes.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  one- 
half  of  the  contingent  was  employed  in  keeping 
the  other  under  the  colours,  till  it  was  wisely 
recalled. 

So  now  I  was  a  journalist  at  large,  and  I  began 
to  write  for  The  New  York  World  under  the  resident 
London  Correspondent  of  the  paper.  Geneva  was 
my  first  commission  of  importance.  This  was  in 
1872,  when  England  was  going  into  arbitration  on 
the  Alabama  claims,  on  a  sort  of  foregone  con- 
clusion that  she  was  to  be  a  loser  by  the  trans- 
action. In  the  course  of  the  war  she  had  suffered 
the  Alabama  and  the  most  destructive  of  her  con- 
sorts to  be  built,  or  equipped  and  manned,  in 
English  ports.  The  result  was  a  tremendous  bill 
for  damages,  direct  or  indirect ;  and  all  that  the 
international  Tribunal  had  to  do  was  to  cut  it 
down  to  a  figure  that  might  be  acceptable  to  both 
parties.  Sir  Roundell  Palmer,  afterwards  Lord 
Selborne,  as  leading  counsel,  and  Sir  Alexander 
Cockburn,  as  a  member  of  the  Court,  were  the 
chief  representatives  of  England.  Mr.  Caleb 


INTERVIEWING  95 

Gushing,  Mr.  Waite  and  Mr.  Evarts  were  counsel 
for  the  United  States.  Palmer  kept  his  temper, 
whatever  he  may  have  thought  of  his  mission  : 
Cockburn  did  not  profit  by  the  example.  I  hap- 
pened to  travel  to  Geneva  by  the  train  that  took 
him  to  his  destination,  and  he  seemed  to  glare 
discontent  as  he  alighted  here  and  there,  to  pace 
the  platform  for  a  breather. 

Unfortunately  he  took  his  temper  with  him  into 
Court ;  and  Mr.  Gushing  made  no  secret  of  his 
sense  of  the  discourtesy  of  this  proceeding.  Follow- 
ing the  etiquette  of  their  profession,  the  American 
lawyers  were  for  harmonious  social  relations  with 
the  other  side,  but  they  found  it  impossible,  at 
any  rate  with  Cockburn.  Invitations  to  dinner 
were  steadily  declined,  and  there  was  no  knowing 
where  to  have  him  even  for  an  exchange  of  views 
on  the  state  of  the  weather.  He  was  a  proud  man  ; 
it  was  galling  to  him  to  think  that  such  a  case 
should  have  been  arbitrated  at  all.  He  seemed  to 
chafe  under  it,  while  his  British  colleague,  like  a 
true  advocate,  took  it  all  as  part  of  the  day's  work. 
This  perhaps  was  another  grievance.  They  were 
certainly  an  ill-assorted  pair  :  Palmer,  smooth  as 
Addison  (not  to  say  as  Sir  John  Simon),  the  other 
savage  as  Swift. 

There  were  faults  on  both  sides.  Gushing  was 
rather  sweet  on  himself  as  the  man  who  seemed 
to  "  know  the  language  "  wherever  he  went.  He 
not  only  wrote,  but  argued  his  case  in  French,  for 
the  benefit  of  three  of  the  arbitrators,  who  were 
without  a  word  of  English,  but  who  had  no  right 
to  expect  relief  at  the  expense  of  other  members 


96  MY  HARVEST 

of  the  tribunal.  As  a  bench  of  judges,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  advocates,  they  were  strange  yoke- 
fellows to  be  sure — a  Swiss,  an  Italian,  and  a 
Brazilian  with  but  the  Englishman  and  the  Ameri- 
can as  perfect  masters  of  our  tongue.  French,  of 
course,  was  quite  in  order  as  the  official  language, 
but  when  Gushing  proceeded  to  air  his  Italian  in 
asides  for  the  benefit  of  Count  Sclopis,  the  pair 
probably  had  it  all  to  themselves.  At  any  rate 
Cockburn  objected,  and  the  other  could  think  of 
nothing  better  in  reply  than  to  offer  him  any 
language  to  his  liking,  "  not  excepting  Chinese." 
Years  before,  it  seems,  he  had  negotiated  the  first 
American  treaty  with  China. 

But,  whatever  the  provocation,  Cockburn  went 
simply  all  to  pieces  as  to  dignity  and  courtesy  in 
other  stages  of  the  quarrel.  He  charged  the 
American  counsel  with  "  strange  misrepresenta- 
tions, assertions  without  a  shadow  of  foundation, 
attempts  to  practise  on  the  credulity  or  ignorance 
of  the  Bench,  ignorance  of  law  and  history,"  and 
with  other  unpleasant  things,  including  "  imagina- 
tions that  must  have  been  lively,  while  their  con- 
sciences slept."  It  was  so  bad  that  at  one  point 
Mr.  Adams  jumped  up  and  threatened  to  sit  there 
no  longer  to  hear  his  country  traduced.  For  this, 
however,  the  offender  had  the  grace  to  apologize. 
But  he  kept  it  up  to  the  last,  refusing  to  sign  the 
judgment  as  a  whole,  and  publishing  his  reasons 
as  a  sort  of  minority  report. 

Appropriately  enough,  in  regard  to  the  con- 
fusion of  tongues,  the  tribunal  sat  in  the  ancient 
Town  Hall  of  Geneva,  which,  with  its  winding  way 


INTERVIEWING  97 

instead  of  a  staircase,  was  reminiscent  of  early 
pictures  of  the  Tower  of  Babel.  There  were  no 
steps.  You  mounted  by  an  inclined  plane  whereon 
a  trick  cyclist  might  easily  have  ridden  from 
bottom  to  top  as  a  demonstration  in  hill-climbing. 
A  door,  guarded  by  ushers  and  festooned  with 
flags,  marked  the  scene  of  the  deliberations.  The 
correspondents  stood  in  line  in  the  ante-chamber 
to  see  the  arbitrators  pass  in,  and  if  possible  to 
catch  secrets  from  their  glances.  Cockburn's 
signals,  as  we  have  seen,  were  misleading  as  being 
always  at  storm. 

Caleb  Gushing  was  one  of  those  who  fell  to  my 
lot  for  subsequent  calls.  He  was  always  kindly 
and  sometimes  communicative  if  you  knew  how 
to  manage  him,  but  woe  to  those  who  tried  to 
reach  him  by  the  machinery  of  the  interview. 
They  came  out  as  empty  as  they  went  in,  and 
what  was  more  aggravating  hardly  discovered  it 
till  they  were  on  their  way  to  the  telegraph  office. 
Then  they  found  that  he  had  simply  interviewed 
the  interviewer.  It  was  unique  as  a  new  process 
in  this  branch  of  the  art  of  self-defence,  and 
triumphantly  successful :  there  was  no  getting 
within  his  guard.  It  would  run  somewhat  in  this 
way  :— 

Pumper.     Good  morning,  Mr.  Gushing. 

Pumpee.  Good  morning,  good  morning.  How 
are  you  getting  on  ? 

Pumper.  Not  very  well  as  to  news  :  I  suppose 
you  have  now  come  to  pretty  close  quarters  with 
the  Arbit 

Pumpee.    Oh  that:   yes,  pretty  close.    But  has 


98  MY  HARVEST 

it  occurred  to  you  that  this  is  a  most  interesting 
city? 

Pumper.     I  daresay ;  but  as  to  the  Arbit ? 

Pumpee.  One  of  the  most  interesting  cities  in 
the  world.  Why  do  you  know  that  this  lake  at 
our  feet  has  been  the  scene  of  some  of  the  most 
exciting  naval  battles  in  history. 

Pumper.    As  I  was  about  to  say,  the  Alabama 

Pumpee.  Oh  centuries  before  that  —  canton 
against  canton,  galleys  by  the  hundred,  with  men 
chained  to  the  oar.  One  side  out  for  conquest,  and 
the  other  for  independence.  Your  readers  would 
like  that. 

Pumper.  Just  now,  I  fancy,  they  would  be 
rather  more  interested  in  the 

Pumpee.  You'll  find  all  about  it  in  a  little  book 
on  the  Quay  :  only  two  francs  seventy-five,  and 
crammed  with  facts. 

Interviewing  was  ever  an  abomination  to  me, 
and  I  made  a  firm  stand  against  it  as  soon  as  I 
could.  The  blame  for  it  lies  chiefly  with  the 
editors,  who  in  this  connection  are  as  generals 
enjoying  the  snug  repose  of  guarded  tents  while 
they  decree  forlorn  hopes  for  their  followers,  very 
often  but  as  a  line  of  least  resistance  in  tactical 
invention.  Never  shall  I  forget  the  embarrassments 
of  one  adventure  of  this  sort,  which  I  undertook 
years  after,  at  the  bidding  of  the  egregious  Hurlbert. 
He  was  in  London  at  the  moment ;  and  in  a  mood 
of  lightness  of  heart  he  summoned  me  from  afar 
to  his  temporary  chambers  in  the  Albany.  I 
went,  and  was  asked  to  interview  Disraeli  and 
Gladstone  at  once  on — things  in  general,  for 


INTERVIEWING  99 

there  was  not  a  word  of  intelligent  direction  as 
to  what  they  were  to  be  interviewed  about.  Both 
were  at  their  country  places,  and  Disraeli  was 
first  on  the  list.  Hurlbert  was  of  some  consequence 
in  the  London  society  of  the  time,  and  he  gave 
me  letters  of  introduction  from  himself  to  these 
eminent  persons,  written  rather  in  soft  soap  than  in 
ink.  There  was  nothing  for  it,  so  I  started  straight 
for  Hughenden,  lightly  meditating  modes  of  pain- 
less suicide  on  the  journey. 

There  was  no  need  of  that  :  it  was  so  soon 
over  in  another  way  :  "  His  Lordship  is  sorry ; 
he  is  particularly  engaged  to-day.  But,  if  you 
would  like  to  see  the  peacocks " 

"  Very  much,  if  only  they  were  talking  birds. 
Good  afternoon  !  " 

What  a  failure  as  a  mission ;  but,  as  putting 
off  an  hour  of  humiliation,  what  a  relief ! 

Hawarden  next  day. 

With  what  topic  should  I  try  to  start  him  ? 
I  meditated  it  for  miles  and  hours  to  the  rhythmic 
beat  of  the  engine.  Three  possibilities  emerged 
in  a  sort  of  replica  of  his  own  three  courses  in 
every  situation.  Though  still  coquetting  with  the 
idea  of  retirement  from  politics,  he  was  already 
preparing  for  the  spring  that  was  to  bring  him 
back  into  power.  Thus  they  stood. 

1.  He  had  lately  written,  in  The  North  American 
Review,   "  Kin  Beyond  Sea  "  —a  sort  of  counter- 
blast   to    the    new-fangled    Imperialism    of    his 
rival. 

2.  He  was  at  daggers  drawn  with  the  classes 
as  distinct  from  the  masses. 


100  MY  HARVEST 

3.  He  had  long  since  said  that  Jefferson  Davis 
had  made  a  nation,  but  he  had  not  lived  it  down 
in  its  effect  on  public  opinion  in  the  Northern 
States. 

The  last  in  reserve,  if  the  others  failed ;  but 
any  or  all  would  do,  if  only  I  could  get  my 
chance. 

Hawarden  itself  seemed  a  perfect  castle  of 
indolence  in  its  approaches.  At  the  lower  gate, 
by  which  I  entered,  there  was  no  porter  in  charge 
of  the  unfinished  lodge  :  and  I  had  nearly  a  mile's 
walk  through  a  leafy  avenue  without  meeting  a 
soul.  Next  a  battlement  came  in  view  through 
the  screen  of  branches,  then  a  large  outbuilding 
inscribed  "  Mrs.  Gladstone's  Orphanage,"  and  I 
was  in  the  courtyard.  There  was  still  not  a  sign 
of  a  human  being,  not  even  of  an  orphan ;  but 
presently  I  caught  sight  of  a  thoroughly  charac- 
teristic figure  for  a  place  of  this  description,  the 
beggar  at  the  gate.  I  passed  the  beggar,  rang  at 
the  hall  door,  but,  as  no  one  answered  either  a 
first  or  a  second  summons,  I  was  glad  to  return 
and  take  my  place  by  the  sturdy  fellow's  side. 
The  servant  lad  who  had  come  out  to  relieve  his 
wants  was  made  acquainted  with  mine ;  and  I 
returned  to  the  main  door  to  have  it  opened  at 
last. 

It  was  still  a  silence,  if  not  a  solitude,  as  the  man 
took  my  card  and  my  precious  letter  of  introduction 
without  a  word.  There  was,  however,  no  lack  of 
good  company  in  many  portraits  of  the  Glyn 
family  hanging  in  the  spacious  hall.  Most  of  them 
evidently  belonged  to  that  period  of  the  great  civil 


INTERVIEWING  101 

war  in  which  their  originals  made  a  mighty  stride 
in  fortune  by  purchasing  Hawarden,  one  of  the 
sequestered  estates  of  James,  seventh  Earl  of 
Derby,  who  had  just  perished  by  the  axe.  They 
held  it  thenceforth,  until  Mr.  Gladstone  came  to 
share  the  possession  by  his  marriage  with  the 
family.  One  seemed  a  very  long  way  off  indeed 
from  the  civil,  or  any  other  wars,  in  this  peaceful 
vestibule  ;  and  there  was  nothing  to  disturb  the 
harmony  of  association  in  the  drawing-room  beyond 
richly  stored  with  old  china.  Old  china  was  one  of 
the  tastes  of  which  Mr.  Gladstone  had  repented — a 
sort  of  folly  of  youth  in  which  he  had  spent  many 
thousand  pounds  of  his  once  ample  fortune.  But 
he  had  repented,  like  most  of  us  not  without  some 
snatches  of  kindly  remembrance  of  the  pleasures  of 
the  old  sin. 

The  man  was  quick  enough  this  time.  "  Mr.  Glad- 
stone is  exceedingly  sorry,  but " 

It  was  a  case  for  desperate  measures,  and  I  took 
the  first  to  hand. 

"  Give  my  compliments  to  Mr.  Gladstone  and 
say  that  I  am  exceedingly  sorry  too.  I  have  come 
a  long  way  in  the  hope  of  seeing  him  for  a  few 
moments.  It  seems  rather  hard " 

He  was  soon  back  again.  "  Will  you  please 
walk  this  way  "  ;  and  in  another  moment  I  was 
in  the  drawing-room  and  face  to  face  with  my 
head  of  the  herd. 

One  glance  at  him  was  enough  to  forbid  all 
thought  of  the  ease  of  retirement.  He  came  in 
hurriedly,  as  though  fresh  from  the  most  pressing 
labours — if  one  might  judge  by  the  purposeful 


102  MY  HARVEST 

set  of  the  lines  of  his  face.  There  was  no  missing 
this  expression.  The  face  was  the  first  thing  you 
looked  at,  and  the  last.  I  was  going  to  say  the 
only  thing,  but  I  belie  myself  by  adding  that  he 
was  dressed  from  head  to  foot  in  light  sporting 
tweed.  The  contrast  was  striking ;  the  body 
all  country  gentleman — down  even  to  the  heavy 
shooting  boots — the  head  all  statesman  thinker, 
and,  but  for  the  brightness  of  the  eye,  toilworn 
recluse.  It  was  a  contrast  that  ran  through  every 
detail  of  his  appearance.  What  were  these  stories 
of  him  as  a  woodman,  a  feller  of  oaks  on  the  estate  ? 
Surely  one  oak  in  a  season  should  suffice  to  exhaust 
the  energies  of  this  spare  and  narrow,  not  to  say 
wasted  frame.  Age  had  assuredly  told  on  him : 
I  seemed  to  be  looking  on  almost  a  little  man. 
The  vast  head  was  altogether  out  of  proportion  to 
its  supports,  a  phenomenon  seemingly  akin  in 
kind,  though  not  in  degree,  to  that  presented  by 
the  appearance  of  the  poet  Swinburne,  whose 
trunk  seemed  but  an  inadequate  mechanical  con- 
trivance for  carrying  his  brain  about. 

"  I  am  so  engaged,"  he  said  with  a  smile  that 
was  matched  in  grave  sweetness  of  expression 
by  his  always  incomparable  voice,  "  that  I  am 
compelled  to  seem  discourteous  to  all  who  call 
without  an  appointment,  but  I  shall  be  most 
happy  to  send  someone  to  show  you  the  house 
and  grounds." 

More  peacocks,  I  thought. 

"  I  must  be  frank  enough  to  admit,"  I  replied, 
"  that  my  sole  desire  is  to  see  their  owner.  The 
author  of  'Kin  Beyond  Sea,'  I  am  afraid,  must 


INTERVIEWING  103 

thank  himself  if  that  wish  is  shared  by  all  who 
like  to  see  justice  done  to  the  spirit  of  American 
institutions  by  an  English  public  man." 

He  led  the  way  through  the  open  window  to  the 
lawn  :  I  had  got  him  at  last. 

"  And  yet,  in  a  sense,  I  assure  you  I  made  the 
study  as  much  for  my  own  countrymen  as  for  the 
Americans.  I  have  long  felt  that  we  in  England 
need  a  warning  to  set  our  house  in  order,  and  that  no 
time  can  be  better  than  this  when  we  are  on  the 
brink  of  fresh  imperial  responsibilities." 

It  was  my  turn  now,  but  I  was  too  nervous  to 
do  much  better  than  talk  like  a  book. 

"  You  have  done  but  strict  justice  to  America 
in  praising  her  for  bearing  some  of  the  heaviest 
burdens  of  war  in  time  of  peace  for  the  sake  of 
clearing  off  the  national  debt.  And  may  I  say, 
without  presumption,  that  another  good  example 
might  have  been  found  in  the  steady  resistance 
of  the  Union  to  mere  annexations  for  the  increase 
of  territory." 

"  No  doubt,  but  in  this  case  self-control  is  to 
some  extent  imposed  upon  the  American  people  by 
circumstances,  or  is,  at  least,  obviously  suggested 
by  them.  They  know  the  value  of  the  blessing 
they  have  in  their  vast  continuous  territory.  It 
can  hardly  be  exaggerated.  I  have  dwelt  on  that, 
you  may  observe,  very  earnestly  in  the  article 
which  you  kindly  say  has  so  interested  you,  and  I 
hope  I  have  succeeded  in  making  it  a  capital 
point." 

"  Different  circumstances,"  I  said,  "  should  have 
imposed  the  same  caution  on  Englishmen.  As  it  is, 


104  MY  HARVEST 

the  very  people  are  shouting  over  our  deal  for 
Cyprus." 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  I  had  already 
expressed  my  opinion  on  that  subject  pretty 
plainly  in  Parliament,  and  I  could  not  have  returned 
to  it  without  passing  the  limits  assigned  to  the 
article.  One  great  object  with  me  in  writing  was 
to  warn  certain  classes  in  England — and  these  by 
no  means  the  humblest  in  any  sense — of  the  danger 
of  certain  new  lines  of  policy." 

"  The  4  leisured  classes  '  I  think  you  call  them  ?  " 

"  If  you  like  ;  and  you  will  notice  perhaps  how 
the  well-meant  warning  has  been  received  by  the 
organs  of  these  classes  in  the  English  Press.  Is  it 
possible  to  exceed  the  abuse  and  execration  poured 
upon  me  ?  It  almost  passes  my  comprehension. 
I  have  never  spoken  nor  acted  in  regard  to  any 
class,  with  any  other  desire  than  to  further  its 
truest  interests." 

He  stopped,  woefully  short  of  his  allotted  span 
of  two  columns.  I  had  to  bring  up  my  reserves. 

"  They  have  not  spared  you,  I  observe,  Mr. 
Gladstone,  on  this  occasion,  even  the  old  and  stale 
reproach  of  having  declared  yourself  a  well-wisher 
of  Jefferson  Davis  and  the  Confederacy." 

"  And  I  have  not  answered  that  charge,  because 
I  have  already  met  it  once,  and,  as  I  think,  fully 
and  satisfactorily,  in  a  letter  written  for  publication 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  What  is  the  truth 
about  it  ?  In  my  first  utterance  on  the  subject  I 
merely  stated  what,  to  my  mind,  appeared  to  be 
a  fact.  I  did  not  express  a  feeling.  As  I  then  read 
the  American  Constitution  it  gave  the  States  a  right 


INTERVIEWING  105 

to  secede ;  and  that  in  so  reading  it  I  was  not  alone 
among  impartial  observers,  it  is  scarcely  necessary 
for  me  to  say.  But  this,  of  course,  would  not 
content  some  persons  who  were  determined  to 
misunderstand  me,  and  I  was  said  to  have  wished 
success  to  the  Confederate  cause,  though  I  had  never 
concealed  my  conviction  that  the  act  of  secession 
was  in  every  respect  a  mistake.  But,  I  repeat, 
all  this  was  explained  in  the  letter  I  have  alluded 
to,  and,  but  for  your  reference  to  it,  I  should 
certainly  not  have  thought  it  necessary  to  return 
to  the  subject.  I  am,  indeed,  still  of  my  original 
opinion,  but  what  I  have  now  said  is  in  no  sense 
a  supplementary  explanation  for  the  public  in 
general,  since,  in  my  judgment,  none  is  needed. 
At  least  (firmly)  I  have  none  to  offer." 

Still  short  of  full  measure  :  I  had  to  hark  back 
to  the  Review. 

"  You  will  very  probably  be  accused  of  having 
urged  America  to  try  the  experiment  of  constitu- 
tional monarchy.  I  was  struck  by  a  passage  in 
your  article  which  might  easily  bear  a  construction 
of  that  sort." 

"  Only,  as  in  the  other  case,  by  confounding  a 
statement,  or  what  in  this  case  is  hardly  even  a 
statement,  with  the  expression  of  a  wish.  Read 
the  passage  again." 

"  It  has  occurred  to  me,"  I  said,  "  as  I  daresay 
it  has  to  others,  that  your  temperate  panegyric  on 
the  British  Constitution  involves  a  severe  censure 
on  the  manner  in  which  the  Constitution  is  now 
being  worked." 

He  walked,  but  he  no  longer  talked. 


106  MY  HARVEST 

"  The  Sovereign,"  I  continued,  "  is  but  one 
great  power  in  the  State,  acting  in  harmony  with 
the  rest,  yet  how  much  has  lately  been  done  to 
reduce  Parliament  to  the  position  of  a  mere  recorder 
of  decrees." 

Still  walking. 

"  It  is  impossible,  too,  to  forget  that  the  man 
who  has  revived  this  view  of  the  Constitution  of  our 
day,  has  also  secured  a  great  accession  of  strength 
for  his  own  office.  The  Premier  may  soon  be  a  sort 
of  grand  vizier  over  his  colleagues,  and  the  virtual 
ruler  of  the  nation." 

More  exercise. 

"  There  was  one  very  striking  passage  in  '  Kin 
Beyond  Sea ' — the  implied  charge  against  demo- 
cracies of  ingratitude  to  their  champions  and 
deliverers. 

I  said  this,  as  having  in  my  mind,  his  :  "  It 
seems  very  possible  that  after  a  few  years  we  may 
see  most  of  the  labourers,  both  in  the  Southern 
States  and  in  England,  actively  addicted  to  the 
political  support  of  their  countrymen  who,  to  the 
last,  have  resisted  their  emancipation."  Plainly 
enough  written  with  a  bitter  remembrance  of  his 
own  fall  from  power. 

He  broke  silence  at  last,  but  it  was  only  a 
valedictory  : 

"  Would  you  like  to  see  the  old  castle  ?  this  part 
is  the  new  house." 

"  Thank  you  :  I  am  afraid  I  have  already  taken 
up  too  much  of  your  time." 

But  his  scalp  was  in  my  belt ;  and  a  pretty 
poor  sort  of  savage  I  felt  for  my  pains. 


INTERVIEWING  107 

To  have  talked  with  him  was  uplifting,  in  the 
sense  that  one  had  touched  history.  He  was  an 
event — prophet  and  pragmatist  in  one,  a  man  of 
deep  conviction,  yet  still  able  to  take  what  I  believe 
to  be  the  right  view  of  politics,  as  a  business 
transaction  in  spiritual  affairs.  His  modesty  was 
deep  and  sincere  ;  at  the  same  time,  it  was  definable 
as  an  art  of  inducing  people  to  forgive  success. 


CHAPTER    VIII 
SPAIN  IN  REVOLUTION 

SPAIN  followed  Geneva  as  a  mission,  in  1873, 
this  time  for  the  New  York  Tribune.  Amadeus 
of  Italy,  chosen  to  fill  the  Spanish  throne  after 
the  expulsion  of  Isabella,  had  left  it  vacant  again 
by  his  sudden  resignation  at  the  beginning  of  the 
year.  He  was  an  honest  man,  Prim's  choice  in 
the  emergency,  and  Prim's  mind  was  of  those 
that  yield  their  best  in  a  quick  brew.  But  Amadeus 
had  been  boycotted  by  court  and  people  as  a 
foreigner,  and  being  quite  their  match  in  pride, 
he  packed  his  trunks  and  went  home  again.  His 
grandees  never  attended  his  receptions,  and  gener- 
ally speaking  left  him  in  a  void.  He  wrote  a 
parting  address  of  great  dignity  and  was  escorted 
to  the  frontier  with  every  mark  of  respect.  If 
kings  showed  a  little  more  of  that  spirit,  it  would 
be  better  for  them  :  it  is  their  insistence  on  being 
the  only  servants,  public  or  private,  who  decline 
to  'take  warning'  that  so  often  brings  them  to 
mischance. 

The  Republicans  with  Castelar  and  Figueras  at 
their  head,  the  latter  much  against  his  will,  got 
the  Republic  proclaimed,  and  the  Carlists  had 
already  started  the  inevitable  insurrection. 

I  went  straight  through  to  Madrid  to  take  stock 
of  the  situation.  There  was  but  one  sign  of  trouble 

108 


SPAIN  IN  REVOLUTION  109 

on  the  way.  The  train  came  to  a  sudden  halt — no 
difficulty  with  Spanish  trains — and  word  ran  from 
carriage  to  carriage  of  a  bomb  found  on  the  line. 
It  served  to  beguile  the  tedium  of  a  long  journey, 
more  especially  as  we  made  Madrid  without  farther 
incident. 

There,  it  was  all  new  to  me  in  being  at  least  as 
old  as  Borrow  and  Ford,  to  go  no  farther.  I  put 
up  in  the  Puerta  del  Sol,  and  the  morning  after 
my  arrival  I  heard  guitars  in  the  street  below,  and 
looking  out  saw  the  University  students  in  full 
fig  for  a  masquerade — black  silk  from  top  to  toe, 
knee-breeches,  and  the  spoon  in  their  cocked-hats. 
This  brought  us  at  least  to  Cervantes,  and  was 
very  good  going  backwards  for  a  first  day.  They 
were  out  in  the  old  fashion  for  dramatized  carica- 
ture, this  time  at  the  expense  of  some  unpopular 
person  represented  by  a  sort  of  guy  in  a  coffin. 
My  letters,  as  one  may  imagine,  began  to  write 
themselves. 

There  were  other  correspondents  at  the  hotel, 
among  them  Coutouly  of  The  Temps  who  after- 
wards, in  quite  a  normal  way  with  journalists  in 
France,  became  French  ambassador  to  one  of  the 
European  courts.  He  knew  his  Spain  well,  and 
helped  me  greatly  in  the  handling  of  the  ropes. 
He  at  once  took  me  to  see  Castelar,  now  lodged  in 
the  palace  just  left  by  the  late  king.  My  most 
vivid  recollection  of  the  visit  is  that  Amadeus 
smoked  excellent  cigars.  The  French  of  the  new 
tenant  was  of  a  sort  that  you  could  cut  with  a 
knife.  He  talked  gloriously  in  the  fine  florid 
manner  of  his  speeches  and  of  his  University 


110  MY  HARVEST 

lectures,  unconditioned  by  any  troublesome  intru- 
sion of  mere  practical  ways  and  means  for  the 
government  of  men.  We  were  going  to  have  a 
great  time  of  it  in  the  regeneration  of  Spain  :  wait 
and  see. 

While  waiting  I  presented  my  letters  of  introduc- 
tion, and  in  particular  made  the  acquaintance  of  an 
American  family  long  domiciled  in  Madrid.  They 
took  me  to  the  opera  in  the  family  coach,  and, 
to  my  inexpressible  joy,  thought  it  necessary  to 
have  a  stout  fellow  on  the  box  by  the  coachman, 
with  pistols  in  his  belt,  and,  if  I  remember 
rightly,  another  man-at-arms  in  the  boot.  Nothing 
happened  but  at  least  it  was  Old  Spain  once  more. 
It  was  like  that  in  everything.  At  the  local  bank 
you  were  reconnoitred  through  a  hole  in  the  door, 
and  locked  in  again  on  crossing  the  threshold. 

And  so  to  the  Chamber  for  a  lively  debate,  with 
the  Press  correspondents  taking  free  inter jectional 
part  in  it  from  the  gallery  in  which  we  all  sat.  One 
ceased,  for  the  moment,  to  feel  like  a  foreigner, 
for  the  accents  and  the  gestures  interpreted  at 
least  half  of  it  without  the  help  of  words.  The 
same  sort  of  assistance  stood  me  in  good  stead  in 
subsequent  visits  to  the  play-houses,  whenever 
there  was  a  lull  in  the  political  storm.  All  I  wanted 
was  the  general  scheme  of  the  piece  ;  the  sonorous 
declamation  did  the  rest.  Here  again  manners  and 
customs  were  as  old  as  Gil  Bias. 

But  this  naturally  was  too  good  to  last.  It  was 
still  the  dream  only  ;  while  the  business  was  about 
as  bad  as  bad  could  be.  Poor  Spain  had  to  make 
her  reckoning  with  the  time  spirit ;  and,  at  her 


SPAIN  IN  REVOLUTION  111 

age,  she  was  not  to  be  rejuvenated  at  a  bound. 
The  Cortes  had  no  sooner  voted  the  Republic,  than 
the  trouble  began.  What  sort  of  Republic  should 
it  be  ?  asked  the  Federals  and  Communists — the 
latter  being,  in  essentials,  the  old  Commune  of 
Paris,  spoiling  for  another  fight.  This  cry  set  the 
south  in  a  flame  of  revolt,  for  a  republic  of  state 
rights.  No,  said  the  Government  at  Madrid,  it 
should  be  Liberal  but  fairly  centralized,  with  all 
the  nice  things  in  it — separation  of  church  and 
state,  free  religious  worship,  abolition  of  the  no- 
bility, equal  electoral  districts  as  to  the  count  of 
"  souls,"  and  the  army  reorganized  but  still  only 
on  the  old  basis  of  conscription.  Great  cities 
declared  their  independence,  while  the  armies  went 
forth  to  put  them  down,  with  all  the  cumbrous 
machinery  of  the  pitched  battle  and  the  siege. 

The  eastern  provinces  were  for  a  turn  at  Anarchy 
on  their  own  account,  and  one  fine  day  the  sailors 
of  Cartagena  began  to  sneak  off  with  the  fleet. 
Two  ships  began  their  travels  in  this  way,  until 
they  were  captured  by  the  German  vessels  on  the 
station,  and  handed  over  to  the  British  Admiral 
for  safe  keeping.  They  still  showed  fight,  till  he 
trained  his  guns  on  them  ready  to  fire.  They  were 
then  stored  at  Gibraltar,  and  in  due  course,  restored, 
with  compliments,  to  the  de  facto  government. 
Here  now  were  pretty  quarrels  among  republicans, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  Basques  in  the  north-west, 
out  for  Church  and  King  —  of  the  Legitimist 
variety — with  battles  and  massacres  galore.  The 
Don  Carlos  of  the  moment  had  long  passed  out 
of  the  condition  of  personality  to  become  the 


112  MY  HARVEST 

label  of  a  system  in  which  it  was  merged.  He  had 
come  out  in  the  time  of  Amadeus,  in  sacred  pro- 
test against  the  House  of  Savoy  which  had  made 
the  Pope  the  prisoner  of  the  Vatican.  His  oppor- 
tunity found  him  in  pleasant  quarters  in  the 
Riviera  or  elsewhere,  and  he  drew  the  necessary 
cheques  for  his  agents  in  the  provinces  on  his 
inexhaustible  civil  list  of  revolt.  When  all  was 
ready,  he  set  forth  in  great  state  to  take  the  field, 
with  court  and  staff  and  all  the  rest  of  it  in  his 
train.  The  local  priests  brought  in  their  levies, 
not  a  few  of  them  armed  with  the  blunderbuss 
warranted  at  a  single  discharge  to  cover  a  whole 
barn  door  with  wounds.  At  first  it  seemed  a  sort 
of  devils'  dance  of  the  brute  forces  of  the  prime, 
with  an  insane  cure  of  Santa  Cruz  levying  black- 
mail by  shooting  men,  tarring,  feathering  or  flogging 
women,  and  making  it  hard  for  the  most  hardened 
of  optimists  to  echo  the  cry  "  God's  in  His  heaven — 
all's  right  with  the  world  !  " 

South  and  east  were  eventually  reduced,  and  a 
Federal  Republic  of  sorts  was  constituted  in  due  form, 
but  the  Carlists  still  kept  the  butchery  going,  till 
the  land  seemed  to  sweat  blood.  After  six  months 
of  it  poor  Castelar,  much  to  his  astonishment  no 
doubt,  found  himself  President  of  the  Cortes  and 
virtual  dictator,  with  all  the  welter  still  on  his  hands. 
Four  months  more  and  he  was  voted  into  nothing- 
ness, to  bring  the  first  year  to  a  close.  Then,  with 
the  opening  of  1874,  the  discontented  soldiery, 
blindly  obeying  their  chiefs,  took  the  whole  matter 
in  hand,  forcibly  turned  the  Cortes  out  of  doors, 
and  put  Serrano  into  power  as  a  kind  of  first  step 


SPAIN  IN  REVOLUTION  113 

of  a  return  to  the  old  Liberal  monarchy,  or  as  you 
were.  As  a  man  of  business  and  of  few  words, 
he  at  once  declared  all  Spain  in  a  state  of  siege. 
By  December,  Alfonso,  son  of  the  exiled  Isabella, 
was  ready  with  his  manifesto  as  "  Spaniard, 
Catholic  and  Liberal,"  and  on  the  very  last  day 
of  the  year  he  was  proclaimed  king.  1875  was  all 
savage  fighting  with  the  Carlists.  The  spring  of 
1876  saw  Don  Carlos  a  fugitive  at  Bayonne,  and 
Alfonso  making  his  triumphant  entry  into  Madrid 
for  the  beginning  of  a  peaceful  and  fairly  successful 
reign  that  lasted  till  his  death.  The  attempt  to 
make  a  Republic  with  ultra-Republicans  had  failed  : 
in  their  hurry  for  the  millennium  they  fell  over 
their  own  feet.  Spain  had  boxed  the  compass  and 
was  a  monarchy  once  more. 

The  innermost  meaning  of  it  all  is  that  the  old 
Spain  of  the  common  people  wants  to  be  a  new 
Spain,  just  as  the  old  Russia,  Turkey,  China, 
Persia  of  the  same  classes  want  to  make  the  same 
change.  All  the  picturesque  races  are  longing  to 
get  rid  of  their  fleas,  or,  in  other  terms,  to  improve 
themselves  out  of  the  sordid  conditions  that  make 
them  so  interesting  to  the  onlooker  with  the  sketch 
book.  The  Spanish  people  hated  conscription  for 
the  army,  yet  in  the  lack  of  statesmanship  among 
the  governing  classes,  it  was  impossible  to  govern 
in  any  other  way.  Castelar  had  to  yield  on  this 
point,  and  when  he  yielded  he  was  done  for  in  the 
eyes  of  the  masses,  especially  of  those  who  had 
been  made  soldiers  against  their  will.  All  were 
penniless  and  miserable  under  the  absentee  land- 
lords in  the  country,  and  the  carpet-bagger  lawyers 


114  MY  HARVEST 

in  the  towns.  As  many  as  could  emigrated  to  the 
Americas,  or  went  into  brigandage  at  home  for  a 
living. 

The  loss  of  the  victimized  colonies  has  enormously 
improved  the  prospect.  Spain  is  learning  to  depend 
on  herself :  "  here  or  nowhere  is  America  "  will 
be  the  motto  now.  With  more  businesslike  con- 
ditions of  government,  the  people,  especially  the 
peasantry,  are  less  wretched,  and  that  is  at  least 
a  first  step  on  the  road  to  better  things. 

When  the  Irreconcilables,  otherwise  the  double- 
dyed  Reds,  broke  out  against  the  republic  at 
Barcelona,  Figueras  made  a  special  journey  to 
quiet  them  down,  with  one  of  the  deepest-dyed  of 
their  number,  Roque  Barcia,  for  his  bear-leader. 
The  United  States  sent  a  warship,  by  way  of  moral 
support,  and  he  came  on  board.  I  saw  him  there, 
a  tired  old  man  distributing  tired  handshakes,  and 
still  more  tired  smiles,  till  it  was  time  to  get  back 
again,  and  shoulder  the  orb  of  his  fate. 

Having  given  the  Revolution  its  send-off  for 
my  readers,  I  had  to  get  home,  this  time  by  way 
of  Perpignan.  There  was  no  through  communica- 
tion with  France  by  railway,  on  that  side,  and 
we  had  to  cross  the  Pyrenees  in  a  diligence.  For 
the  tourist,  it  was  the  perfection  of  the  picturesque, 
ancient  walled  towns  asleep  behind  their  battle- 
ments, with  their  gates  closed  against  all  comers, 
and,  at  the  end  of  the  journey,  the  floor  of  a  rail- 
way station  for  a  bed,  for  want  of  an  hotel  equal 
to  the  strain. 

All  these  difficulties  were  complicated  by  per- 
sonal ambitions  and  personal  jealousies  to  an 


SPAIN  IN  REVOLUTION  115 

almost  inconceivable  extent.  Not  the  least  of  such 
trials  was  the  Queen-Mother  Isabella  in  her  new 
part  of  mother-in-law.  There  was  much  excuse 
for  her.  On  the  principle  of  visiting  the  sins  of 
the  fathers  upon  the  children,  she  could  not  for- 
give her  son's  first  wife  Mercedes  the  crime  of  her 
origin  as  a  Montpensier.  Isabella  had  a  horrible 
upbringing  in  her  mother's  court,  and  when  she 
was  marriageable  Louis  Philippe  and  his  minister, 
M.  Guizot,  who  posed  as  a  model  of  all  the  virtues, 
contrived  to  have  her  united  to  a  man  whose 
infirmities  seemed  to  preclude  all  possibility  of  his 
having  an  heir.  And  on  the  very  day  of  the  cere- 
mony, by  a  gross  breach  of  faith,  the  precious 
pair  found  a  husband  for  her  younger  sister,  next 
in  the  succession,  in  the  Duke  of  Montpensier,  a 
son  of  the  French  king.  They  had  therefore  only 
to  wait  for  the  death  of  the  childless  queen  to  have 
every  hope  of  seeing  the  younger  sister  or  one  of 
her  children  on  the  throne,  and  French  influence 
predominant  in  Madrid.  It  very  nearly  led  to  war 
between  England  and  France,  and  Palmerston,  this 
time  speaking  for  Queen  Victoria  as  well  as  him- 
self, rapped  out  against  it  with  his  accustomed 
energy.  But  one  thing  brought  it  all  to  nothing : 
Isabella  did  not  prove  childless,  and  the  arch 
intriguers  were  compelled  to  keep  their  thoughts 
to  themselves,  if  only  because,  in  France,  marriage 
precludes  all  legal  inquiry  as  to  paternity. 

Years  after  I  was  received  by  her  in  special 
audience  at  her  Parisian  Palais  de  Castille,  in  the 
Avenue  du  Roi  de  Rome.  She  struck  me  as  one 
whose  misfortunes  were  due  far  less  to  heredity 


116  MY  HARVEST 

than  to  environment.  She  was  of  extreme  sim- 
plicity of  manners,  and  I  should  certainly  think  of  a 
good  heart.  With  decent  parentage  and  guardian- 
ship she  would  probably  have  done  exceedingly 
well  in  any  station — the  humbler  perhaps  the 
better,  but  that  is  true  of  most  of  us.  She  was 
bonne  femme,  with  sparkling  eyes,  a  ready  laugh,  a 
personality  that  seemed  all  good  nature  and  the 
desire  to  please  and  to  be  pleased.  Her  talk — 
chatter,  I  had  almost  called  it — abounded  in  the 
indiscretions  which  are  a  main  note  of  the  character. 
She  was  busy  matchmaking,  as  she  might  have 
been  busy  with  crochet  work,  and  she  made  no 
secret  of  her  wish  to  see  her  son  Alfonso  united 
to  an  English  princess — he  had  become  a  widower 
within  a  few  months  of  his  first  marriage.  Her 
almost  factious  opposition  to  this  union  was  the 
cause  of  her  having  to  leave  Spain  a  second  time. 
She  had  barely  been  allowed  to  return  on  a  promise 
of  abstention  from  all  public  affairs,  when  she 
could  find  nothing  better  to  do  than  denounce 
the  match,  and  she  had  to  forfeit  her  pension, 
and  "  quit." 

She  was  quite  equal  to  the  occasion,  and  osten- 
tatiously sold  her  jewels,  by  way  of  putting  her 
disobedient  son  to  shame.  There  never  was  such 
a  sale  :  it  took  some  weeks,  spread — with  the 
intervals  to  enable  the  public  to  recover  its  breath 
— over  a  period  of  four  months.  All  this  time 
the  auctioneers  were  tap-tap-tapping  to  disperse 
these  hoards  of  a  lifetime,  or  perhaps  of  a  whole 
dynasty.  One  could  but  think  of  the  almost 
irresponsible  owners  of  such  wealth  at  one  end  of 


SPAIN  IN  REVOLUTION  117 

the  scale  of  living,  and  of  the  chestnut,  or,  for  that 
matter,  acorn-fed  wild  men  of  the  cork  woods, 
at  the  other.  There  were  over  three  hundred  lots, 
and  this  did  not  extend  to  the  odds  and  ends  of 
cameos,  smaller  jewels,  medallions  and  a  sort  of 
sweepings  of  unmounted  pearls.  The  greater  lots 
were  in  the  form  of  parures,  that  is  to  say  full 
sets  in  one  pattern  of  diadem,  bracelets,  ear-rings, 
girdle  and  all  the  needful  odds  and  ends.  One 
network  of  emeralds  set  in  brilliants,  called  a 
collar,  might  better  have  deserved  the  name  of  a 
breastplate  as  its  lowest  gem  would  have  touched 
the  waist.  It  was  in  truth  quite  a  piece  of  architec- 
ture, and  it  might  have  served  in  Liliput  as  a 
fa£ade.  Like  many  of  the  other  lots,  it  had  to  be 
divided  owing  to  the  impossibility  of  finding  a 
buyer  for  it  as  it  stood.  Such  too  was  the  fate  of 
a  butterfly,  the  sport  of  sunny  hours,  but  decidedly 
one  of  tropical  breed,  for  it  was  nearly  as  big  as 
your  hand.  It  was  too  gross  for  even  a  queen  of 
Brobdingnag,  and  would  have  vulgarized  any 
woman  who  wore  it,  no  matter  what  her  natural 
distinction.  One  shuddered  to  think  of  its  damag- 
ing effect  on  Isabella  of  Spain.  All  jewels  surely 
should  be  worn  in  single  specimens,  not  in  the  bunch 
— the  one  entire  and  perfect  chrysolite  is  enough. 
The  excess  is  the  fault  of  the  jewellers  who  think 
that  twice  one  always  makes  two,  when  in  such 
matters  it  often  brings  you  back  to  zero.  The 
whole  thing  was  brutal  in  the  French  sense. 

Like  many  another  bonne  femme,  the  queen  had 
quite  a  child  mind.  The  person  highest  in  her 
confidence  in  her  retirement  of  the  Palais  de 


118  MY  HARVEST 

Castille  was  her  pet  dwarf.  He  had  a  ready  wit 
and  an  intelligent  face.  His  turn-out  was,  if  not 
one  of  the  most  splendid,  at  least  one  of  the 
neatest  in  Paris.  He  drove  a  pony,  not  much 
larger  than  a  Newfoundland  dog,  in  a  trap  that 
reminded  you  of  the  vehicles  to  which  the  goats  are 
harnessed  in  the  Champs  Elysees.  Everything  was 
in  keeping  about  him,  with  the  exception  of  his 
cigar,  and  that  being  of  the  ordinary  size  was  big 
enough  to  serve  him  as  a  walking-stick.  He  had 
an  establishment ;  and  his  servants  (who,  it  must 
be  confessed,  were  as  much  out  of  keeping  as  the 
weed,  in  being  of  the  common  stature)  seemed  to 
treat  him  with  the  most  profound  respect. 

Before  her  downfall  Isabella  always  kept  a  dwarf, 
perhaps  to  show  her  regard  for  the  ways  of  her  pre- 
decessors on  the  throne.  To  judge  by  what  one 
sees  in  the  picture  gallery  at  Madrid,  the  Spanish 
court  would  have  been  only  more  thoroughly 
incomplete  without  a  monarch  than  without  a 
freak.  There  is  the  king,  and  there  is  the  pigmy 
— the  latter  often  in  the  same  picture  and  always 
close  at  hand.  Sometimes  he  shows  a  sad  face, 
as  of  one  ever  murmuring  at  fortune  for  having 
made  him  greater  than  other  men,  because  nature 
had  made  him  immeasurably  less  ;  sometimes  he 
seems  pleasantly  puffed  up  with  a  sense  of  self- 
importance,  as  though  he  understood  the  royal 
"  we  "  to  include  himself  and  his  master.  Many 
a  minister  of  state  is  missing  from  the  gallery,  but 
there  seems  to  be  no  break  in  the  succession  of 
dwarfs.  When  these  pictures  were  painted  nearly 
every  court  in  Europe  had  a  curiosity  of  this 


SPAIN  IN  REVOLUTION  119 

description,  and  the  little  men  were  so  highly 
prized  that  they  were  among  the  few  objects  of 
interest  which  princes  could  present  to  one  another. 
But  the  demand  for  them  gradually  ceased  as 
common  sense  spread  upwards  from  the  people  to 
their  rulers ;  the  French  Revolution  brought  it 
almost  to  a  standstill,  and  the  diminutive  courtiers 
went  into  limbo  with  the  last  remnants  of  feudalism. 
One  court,  however,  continued  to  give  them  an 
asylum,  and  the  small  gentleman  in  question  shared 
the  confidence  of  Isabella  with  Mafori  and  the 
Bleeding  Nun,  and  accompanied  her  in  her  hasty 
flight  from  the  capital. 

He  left  one  palace  only  to  find  shelter  in  another. 
The  Queen  had  laid  by  for  a  rainy  day,  and  her 
Parisian  exile  was  only  less  splendid  than  her 
state  in  Madrid.  He  had  a  suite  of  apartments  in 
the  regal  mansion  of  the  Avenue  du  Roi  de  Rome, 
and  at  a  fixed  hour  every  morning  he  was  admitted 
to  the  room  of  his  benefactress  with  the  lapdog 
and  the  parrot,  both  brought,  like  himself  with  no 
little  difficulty,  across  the  frontier  in  those  trying 
moments  when  the  Queen  had  to  surrender  every- 
thing but  what  was  absolutely  indispensable  to  her 
comfort.  He  was  of  use  to  Her  Majesty  in  a 
thousand  ways,  his  wit  entertained  her,  and  her 
favourite  morning's  amusement  was  to  see  him 
make  sport  of  the  old  ministers  who  had  contri- 
buted to  her  downfall,  or  of  the  new  ones  who 
were  serving  the  Provisional  Government.  His 
speeches  a  la  Castelar  were  highly  relished ;  and 
he  somehow  used  to  contrive  to  look  tall  for  the 
purpose  of  caricaturing  the  gait  and  bearing  of 


120  MY  HARVEST 

Figueras.  When  the  latter  undertook  his  des- 
perate journey  to  Barcelona,  the  dwarf  made  a 
great  hit  by  appearing  before  his  mistress  one  day 
all  in  red  and  carrying  a  puppet  (made  up  in  rude 
imitation  of  the  Republican  minister),  of  which 
he  pulled  the  strings  to  symbolize  the  relations 
between  Figueras  and  his  unwelcome  associate, 
Roque  Barcia.  The  representation  was  much 
applauded.  Poor  Amadeus,  who  had  previously 
left  the  country,  was,  of  course,  not  spared  ;  and 
the  dwarf  was  peculiarly  happy  in  satirical  touches 
on  the  solitude  in  which  that  king  lived,  through 
the  refusal  of  the  native  nobility  to  attend  his 
court. 

But  he  was  a  good  deal  more  than  a  buffoon — 
he  was  a  trusted  counsellor ;  and  he  was  really 
one  of  the  few  wire-pullers  who  shuffled  puppet 
after  puppet  off  the  scene  at  Madrid  until  the 
stage  was  left  clear  for  the  entry  of  Alfonso.  He 
had  a  sound  head  and  exceptional  opportunities 
of  using  it  to  advantage  in  confidential  missions. 
In  this  capacity  he  was  invaluable,  for  he  was 
about  the  only  person,  known  to  have  been  formerly 
about  the  person  of  Isabella,  who  was  allowed  to 
enter  Spain.  No  one  thought  of  suspecting  him — 
it  was  only  the  dwarf,  and  besides,  he  had  a  capital 
excuse  for  his  presence  in  the  country  :  he  had 
come  to  look  after  his  "  property,"  a  patch  of 
ground  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Aranjuez  bestowed 
on  him  one  day  in  a  frolic  of  good  nature  by  the 
Queen.  He  talked  much  of  his  estate  and  of  the 
neglected  condition  in  which  it  had  been  left  by 
the  fall  of  the  dynasty  ;  and  a  pretended  anxiety 


SPAIN  IN  REVOLUTION  121 

to  secure  it  from  confiscation  gave  him  an  oppor- 
tunity of  seeing  many  of  the  men  in  power,  and 
of  quietly  sounding  them  as  to  their  disposition 
towards  the  exiled  house.  But  his  chief  business 
lay  among  the  leaders  of  the  Alfonsist  party :  and 
he  was  the  most  faithful,  and  the  most  intelligent 
of  go-betweens  for  them  and  for  the  cabal  in 
Paris.  He  was  as  free  from  molestation  from  all 
parties  as  his  colleague  the  parrot,  and  he  had  that 
bird's  gift  of  accurately  repeating  whatever  was 
said  in  his  hearing,  joined  to  an  intelligence  that 
was  all  his  own.  His  memory  was  wonderful  : 
he  took  no  notes,  carried  no  papers,  but  conveyed 
the  substance  of  communications  from  one  side  to 
the  other  without  losing  a  single  item  of  impor- 
tance on  the  way.  When  all  was  ready,  and  Alfonso 
was  about  to  start  from  Paris,  the  little  man  was  in 
high  glee  with  the  expectation  of  being  promoted 
to  the  King's  suite.  But  the  young  monarch  was 
sufficiently  well-advised  to  leave  as  much  as  possible 
of  his  mother's  property  behind  him,  in  ideas  as 
in  personal  belongings,  and  the  dwarf  was  given 
to  understand  that,  small  as  he  was  there  would 
not  be  room  for  him  in  the  baggage. 

There  was  another  reason  for  his  exclusion  : 
Alfonso  simply  detested  him  for  the  contempt 
which  his  influence  in  the  Queen's  household 
tended  to  bring  upon  the  royal  name.  He  was 
part  of  a  peculiarly  hateful  past,  and  a  part  out  of 
all  proportion  to  his  physical  size.  He  was  left 
in  Paris,  as  the  Queen  was  left,  because  both 
would  have  been  highly  dangerous  companions  for 
a  momentous  journey.  Isabella  was  nothing  loath 


122  MY  HARVEST 

to  have  him  with  her ;  she  loaded  him  with 
favours ;  and  with  these  and  her  subsequent  gifts 
he  became  a  rich  man.  Alfonso  would  perhaps 
have  been  content  to  have  seen  both  of  them  for 
the  last  time,  but  he  found  it  impossible  in  the 
long  run  to  resist  his  mother's  entreaties  for  per- 
mission to  return  to  Spain.  He  coupled  his  assent, 
however,  with  one  almost  intolerable  condition  : 
she  was  to  leave  the  dwarf  behind  :  and  there  was 
more  negotiation  on  this  article  of  the  family 
pact  which  preceded  the  journey  than  on  all  the 
rest  put  together.  She  cried  like  an  infant  when 
she  bade  her  abridgment  of  a  courtier  good-bye, 
and  she  left  him  for  a  consolation  the  well-filled 
purse  on  which  he  afterwards  led  the  life  of  a 
gentleman  in  the  most  luxurious  capital  of  Europe. 
A  half-witted  world !  If  the  others  are  no  better, 
it  makes  nightmare  of  the  whole  cosmic  scheme. 


CHAPTER  IX 
PROVINCES  AND  METROPOLE 

MANCHESTER  was  the  next  stage.  I  had 
undertaken  responsibilities  and  I  wanted  a 
regular  engagement.  I  found  it  with  The  Man- 
chester Guardian,  then  as  now  among  the  best, 
local  only  in  its  place  of  origin,  metropolitan  and 
more  in  its  vision,  and  in  its  championship  of  all  the 
great  causes,  win  or  lose. 

S'il  gagne  bataille 
Aura  mes  amours. 
Qu'il  gagne,  ou  qu'il  perd 
Les  aura  toujours. 

Perhaps  the  nymph  was  a  prophetess,  with 
such  a  paper  in  her  mind. 

For  me  it  was  a  great  change,  from  the  capital 
to  a  great  provincial  city.  It  was  so  different, 
sometimes  for  the  better,  sometimes  for  the  worse, 
yet  always  as  a  question  of  limitations.  I  do  not 
mean  in  regard  to  size  :  Manchester  and  Salford 
between  them  are  big  enough  for  anything,  but 
they  are  still  only  varieties  of  the  same  thing. 
London  is  every  city,  and  it  mirrors  the  empire 
and  the  world. 

It  was  not  always  so.  The  chief  provincial 
cities  had  to  suffice  to  themselves  in  politics, 

123 


124  MY  HARVEST 

literature,  science  and  art — to  take  the  formula  of 
the  old-fashioned  weekly  papers.  "  Who  made  the 
assembly  shine  ? — Robin  Adair  !  ?:  There  was  an 
assembly,  a  social  centre.  The  railways  have  put  an 
end  to  all  that.  Now,  if  you  want  a  ball  or  even 
a  party  on  the  big  scale,  you  must  come  to  town 
for  it :  it  costs  less  in  time  and  trouble,  and  even 
in  cash.  The  distant  garrisons  run  up  to  London 
for  their  regimental  dinners.  The  provinces  of 
the  theatrical  world  once  had  companies  of  their 
own,  schools  of  acting,  local  stars.  The  judg- 
ment of  Manchester  has  long  carried  weight  in 
general  criticism.  Its  approval  was  the  starting- 
point  of  the  brilliant  theatrical  career  of  Genevieve 
Ward.  So  in  art  :  you  had  a  Manchester  school, 
as  you  had  a  Norwich  school.  The  Manchester 
painters  still  called  themselves  a  school  in  my 
day,  but  the  migration  had  begun.  Glasgow  still 
struggles  hard,  but  its  crack  hands  await  the 
verdict  on  the  banks  of  the  Thames.  Man- 
chester with  its  Brierlys  and  its  Waughs, 
had  its  own  brand  of  literature  as  the  Lakes  had 
theirs.  They  were  the  writers  for  the  people  and 
about  the  people  :  now  with  the  sevenpenny 
editions,  to  go  no  farther,  every  mill-hand  may 
seek  his  ministrants  in  the  entire  mind  of  the  race. 
It  had  above  all  its  school  in  politics  with  Bright 
and  Cobden  as  men  of  the  time. 

So  it  has  come  to  this,  if  you  blow  a  penny 
whistle  at  the  Hebrides,  to  ends  of  fame  or  fortune, 
you  must  try  your  luck  with  it  in  London  town. 
The  essentially  Scottish  comedian  of  the  music- 
halls  made  his  name  in  London,  though  now, 


PROVINCES  AND  METROPOLE        125 

surpassing  even  the  Christy  Minstrels,  he  never 
performs  out  of  the  planet.  The  gentry  shopped 
in  Manchester,  to  the  glory  and  profit  of  ancient 
firms  counting  their  life  by  centuries  :  we  know 
where  they  shop  to-day.  Manchester  struggled 
hard  for  its  all-sufficing  school  of  music,  with 
Halle  in  the  conductor's  chair,  but  it  now  owns 
the  force  of  gravitation  as  exercised  at  Covent 
Garden  and  Queen's  Hall.  Cobbett  was  at  least 
prophetic  in  calling  London  the  Wen  :  it  appro- 
priates all  the  nutriment  of  the  country  to  its  own 
uses,  diseased  ones  if  you  like  ;  but  protest  is  beside 
the  mark. 

The  local  universities  are  playing  their  part 
in  a  healthier  reaction.  Owens  College  was  but 
our  academic  influence  when  I  first  knew  the 
Guardian :  it  might  now  staff  the  whole  paper 
in  the  higher  branches.  The  editor,  then  as  now, 
was  Charles  Prestwich  Scott.  He  had  passed 
through  Oxford,  and  gradually  brought  in  some  of 
the  Oxford  men.  Before  his  day  the  chief  leader 
writer  was  Acton,  of  the  University  of  London.  In 
this  respect,  however,  as  just  shown,  Manchester 
might  easily  be  sufficient  to  itself.  The  same  thing 
might  be  said,  in  the  same  connexion,  of  the  sister 
universities  of  Liverpool,  Birmingham,  Glasgow  and 
other  great  cities  all  over  the  kingdom.  They 
will  in  time  develop  a  perfect  character  of  their 
own,  perhaps  as  they  learn  to  specialize  less  in 
universality. 

Birmingham  has  made  a  bold  bid  for  freedom, 
but  'it  is  still  a  satellite.  Since  Mr.  Chamberlain 
could  not  avert  that,  it  is  not  to  be  averted,  yet 


126  MY  HARVEST 

his  very  success  would  have  intensified  the 
provincial  note  :  London  is  not  the  bright  par- 
ticular star,  but  the  firmament.  Chamberlain  was 
such  a  star  from  first  to  last  :  as  he  waxed  or 
waned  in  splendour,  so  did  Birmingham  with  him, 
in  rare  subservience  to  his  moods.  I  remember  his 
mayoralty  in  his  salad  days,  and  the  visit  of  the 
Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales,  yet  to  be  Edward 
VII  and  his  Queen.  Would  he  be  decently  civil  to 
them  ? — it  was  a  toss  up.  He  stood  for  the  Radical 
Programme,  for  ransom  as  applied  to  the  classes 
in  possession,  and  for  many  fine  things,  that  yet 
await  the  moon's  next  visit  to  the  earth.  We  all 
trembled,  even  his  own  clients.  Principles  are 
very  well,  but  when  you  have  a  guest  under  your 
roof,  to  say  nothing  of  Royalty,  you  are  under  the 
same  obligations  as  the  Arab  in  his  tent.  Well, 
they  came,  and  all  the  white  country  of  the  cotton 
spinners,  with  half  the  black  came  to  see.  The 
whole  kingdom  heaved  a  sigh  of  relief  when  it 
heard  that  he  had  been  "  nice  "  from  first  to  last. 
His  manners  were  perfect ;  his  decoration  of  the 
town  was  a  model ;  his  orchid  put  all  the  stars  and 
crosses  to  shame.  He  knew  what  he  was  about : 
it  was  his  first  step  into  notice  as  a  governing 
man. 

What  Scotland  gained  by  the  Union,  Edinburgh 
lost.  Think  of  the  days  when  it  was  a  true  capital, 
with  its  own  Parliament  and  Parliament  men, 
its  own  society,  and  later  on  its  own  literary  set 
ruling  all  Britain  from  the  office  of  The  Edinburgh 
Review,  its  very  Nodes  a  main  source  of  light  for 
the  isle.  Its  Athenian  prototype  was  of  course 


PROVINCES  AND  METROPOLE        127 

the  supreme  case  in  point.  It  is  the  multiplicity 
of  interest  that  counts  ;  not  any  one  thing  by 
itself,  but  the  all-roundness  of  them  all  put  together, 
for  the  benefit  of  the  all-round  man. 

There  is  more  of  this  in  the  American  cities. 
Each  is  a  centre  more  or  less  self-sufficing,  and  all 
the  sentiment  it  has  to  spare  goes  rather  to  its 
sovereign  state,  than  to  the  larger  Union  beyond 
— except  of  course  when  the  foreigner  begins  to 
make  remarks. 

Wait  till  Edinburgh  and  Dublin  recover  a 
larger  share  of  political  autonomy,  and  we  shall 
still  see  great  things.  If  not,  we  may,  as  an 
exercise  in  pure  imagination,  amuse  ourselves 
with  a  vision  of  the  provinces  marching  on 
London  to  the  cry  of  '  ancient  lights  '  and  re- 
leasing her  only  upon  terms  of  absolute  social 
independence. 

It  is  difficult  to  say  what  one  means  about  the 
unique  character  of  London  without  having  to 
say  more  than  one  means.  First,  it  is  no  case  of 
superiority,  only  one  of  essential  difference.  The 
other  great  cities  serve  abundantly  to  all  the 
reasonable  wants  of  man.  Perhaps  this  is  just  where 
the  point  comes  :  the  unreasonable  wants  are 
usually  the  most  urgent.  London  affords  such 
ample  subsistence  in  fancy  and  whim,  the  elements 
that  make  for  the  sense  of  freedom  and  fullness  of 
being.  All  the  types  of  humanity  are  in  her  streets 
and  her  public  places,  all  their  records  in  her 
museums,  their  dreams  in  her  picture  galleries,  their 
follies  in  her  shows,  their  race  types  in  her  monster 
hotels  with  her  docks  to  follow.  Her  clubs  are  not 


128  MY  HARVEST 

two  or  three,  one  for  the  county,  one  for  the  middle 
class,  a  third  for  the  others  :  they  sample  the  orb. 
St.  James's  Street  and  Pall  Mall  are  only  for  one 
section,  the  ruling  class  in  arts  and  arms.  If 
you  want  more  or  less,  give  it  a  name  and  it  can 
still  be  found  within  the  radius,  down  to  the  cock 
and  hen  clubs  of  the  eastern  slums. 

Then,  for  all  the  faiths,  consider  only  the  range 
of  her  conventicles  from  the  Abbey  and  St.  Paul's 
to  the  corrugated  roofs  and  spires  of  the  Salvation 
Army,  done  at  a  price.  All  the  insurrections  of 
belief  are  housed  elsewhere,  if  not,  they  still 
make  shift  with  the  street  corners  and  the  parks. 
Bagdad  of  the  caliphs  is  child's  play  to  it  for  the 
variety  of  life.  For  vice  in  its  frolic  hour,  and  in 
its  attribution  to  the  wicked  foreigner,  Soho  may 
serve,  and  for  a  deeper  shade  you  have  but  to 
cross  the  street  to  the  hinterland  of  Tottenham 
Court  Road.  A  modern  Balzac  might  die  of  the 
impossibility  of  writing  a  line,  for  excess  of 
material.  His  Comedie  Humaine  would  be  but 
a  curtain-raiser  now.  Quicquid  agunt  homines — 
what  a  proud  boast,  and  what  a  laughable  one 
when  one  thinks  how  much  Mr.  Bicker  staff  and 
his  merry  men  had  perforce  to  miss.  The  smaller 
cities  miss  most  of  it,  through  being  so  effectually 
policed.  You  cannot  police  London,  and  the 
constable  shows  his  sense  of  it  by  toying  with 
nuts  on  his  beat.  Every  day  some  fifty  thousand 
pleasure  seekers  of  every  tribe  of  civilization  are 
dumped  into  it,  simply  to  see  the  sights.  It  would 
be  distracting  enough  to  send  them  all  to  the 
lunatic  asylums  by  nightfall,  if  they  had  time  to 


PROVINCES  AND  METROPOLE        129 

give  it  a  thought.  Therein  lies  its  magic  :  the 
call  of  London  is  the  call  of  a  syren  of  a  thousand 
wiles. 

In  France  local  independence  counts  for  more, 
as  a  compensation  for  excess  of  administrative 
control.  The  chief  place  of  the  department  has 
usually  its  cathedral,  always  its  public  library, 
museum,  art  gallery.  The  prefect  is  there,  a 
great  civil  officer,  with  his  staff.  The  garrison 
is  generally  hard  by,  and  this  brings  in  the  military, 
if  only  as  partners  at  the  dances.  The  University 
is  there ;  even  its  professors  have  their  social 
uses.  The  Cathedral  chapter  is  not  to  be  forgotten. 
The  magnates  of  commerce  and  industry  rank 
as  powers  with  the  rest.  In  such  societies  a 
writer  like  Anatole  France  has  his  opportunity. 
They  are  organic,  whatever  else  they  are  not  : 
this  marks  the  main  difference  between  French 
and  English  cities  of  the  same  standing.  If  there 
had  been  such  a  true  social  unit  in  Manchester 
when  they  were  building  the  town  hall,  that 
magnificent  structure  would  have  had  a  suitable 
site.  As  it  is,  it  lies  hid  in  its  back  square  hardly 
with  breathing  room  for  its  inmates,  certainly 
with  no  room  for  their  elbows.  That  crime  was 
the  work  of  a  knot  of  intriguers,  some  with  proper- 
ties to  sell,  others  out  for  a  victory  against  common 
sense,  for  the  fun  of  the  thing,  perhaps  the  most 
corrupt  of  all  motives  in  public  affairs.  There 
was  the  site  waiting  in  the  great  square,  then 
dowered  with  a  hideous  infirmary  that  might  easily, 
and  in  every  way  beneficially,  have  been  removed 
to  the  fine  open  country  outside.  In  France 


130  MY  HARVEST 

organized  public  opinion  would  have  put  the 
factions  to  shame.  It  is  hard  to  create  master- 
pieces of  architecture  at  a  pinch,  but  for  how  many 
years  after  Manchester's  elevation  to  a  bishopric 
was  its  cathedral  still  but  a  transmogrified  parish 
church.  Liverpool  is  doing  better  in  cathedrals,  has 
always  done  better — compare  the  two  town  halls  for 
elevations  and  for  pride  of  place — because  Liver- 
pool as  an  organism,  has  more  of  the  all  sorts  that 
go  to  make  a  world.  For  still  one  more  example, 
look  at  the  fine  Rylands  library  of  Manchester, 
and  then  consider  its  site. 

But  what  the  large  cities  lose  in  variety  of 
interest  they  gain  in  concentration  of  character. 
Manchester  was  a  pleasant  place  to  live  in,  as  soon 
as  you  left  the  streets  for  the  houses.  If  you 
had  fewer  acquaintances,  you  had  more  friends. 
The  walls  glowed  with  pictures,  all  well-meaning 
if  not  all  good,  and  charming  as  a  scheme  of 
decoration.  It  was  the  period  of  the  lavish 
outlay  on  art,  as  a  fancy  and  as  an  invest- 
ment combined.  The  nation  was  in  the  full  tide 
of  prosperity :  there  was  money  waiting  for 
profitable  use,  and  it  went  experimentally  into 
masterpieces  of  the  modern  school.  Some  demon 
that  many  mistook  for  an  angel  of  light  whispered 
to  Manchester  "  have  a  taste."  It  was  decided 
that  the  taste  should  be  pictures.  Here  again 
London  had  led  the  way  with  art  as  a  fashion, 
and  Picture  Sunday  as  the  day  of  days  for  the 
year.  There  was  no  dropping  in  about  it :  the 
invitations  were  issued  weeks  in  advance,  and 
where  they  were  not  offered,  they  were  sought.  The 


PROVINCES  AND  METROPOLE        131 

old  masters  still  held  their  ground  for  lip  service, 
but  they  were  not  plentiful  enough  to  meet  the 
demand. 

The  Manchester  man  who  had  just  done  well 
on  'Change  took  his  favourite  picture  dealer's  on 
the  way  home  to  repeat  the  stroke.  His  business, 
in  the  one  place,  was  to  know  all  about  coming 
cargoes,  and,  in  the  other,  about  coming  men. 
The  dealer  was  there  to  advise,  with  the  full 
assurance  of  a  fortune  for  his  share  of  the  transac- 
tion, and  of  good  pickings  for  his  workman  with 
the  brush.  You  bought  at  a  stiff  price  to  stimulate 
the  sense  of  luck  in  the  purchase,  and  four  figures 
were  the  almost  invariable  rule.  The  idea  was 
that  you  had  better  make  haste  about  it,  or  they 
would  soon  be  five.  In  that  expectation  many 
invested  in  pictures  as  they  might  have  invested 
in  diamonds,  confident  of  the  rise,  and  put  them 
on  the  same  footing  as  money,  land,  or  houses  in 
their  wills. 

This  went  on  until  heirs  began  to  realize,  with 
sore  disappointment  in  lieu  of  the  expected  portion. 
The  new  master  instead  of  proving  a  second 
Gainsborough  or  Constable  became  a  mere  Dick 
Tinto  who  had  been  found  out.  The  full  exposure, 
of  course,  did  not  come  all  at  once.  It  was  a 
matter  of  time,  but  its  progress  was  steady,  and 
when  it  was  complete  artists  went  into  the  simple 
life  of  bankruptcy  as  fast  as  the  victims  of  a 
South  Sea  bubble.  Some  died  of  the  change ;  others, 
perhaps  less  fortunate,  lived  on  only  to  see  their 
pictures  laughed  out  of  the  auction  rooms,  at 
prices  that  would  hardly  pay  for  the  frames.  It 


132  MY  HARVEST 

was  all  too  foolish  and  so  unnecessary.  The 
John  Edward  Taylor  sale  showed  what  a  good 
investment  good  art  might  be,  when  the  investor 
was  also  his  own  connoisseur. 

Then  came  the  demand,  which  has  lasted  to 
our  time,  for  old  masters  of  our  own  schools  who 
had  stood  the  test  of  experience.  New  ones,  even 
in  this  line,  had  to  be  discovered  to  meet  the  rush  : 
Raeburn  had  his  turn  at  last.  They,  in  turn, 
became  the  objects  of  an  equally  fatuous  inflation, 
perhaps  to  end  in  a  second  disappointment,  for 
you  may  still  pay  too  dear  for  your  whistle,  though 
a  whistle  of  worth. 

Much  the  same  thing  has  gone  on  in  France. 
Millet,  who  lived  and  died  in  a  cottage  with  ground 
for  the  floor,  realized  fabulous  prices,  not  for  his 
heirs,  worse  luck  !  but  only  for  the  dealers  who 
had  stocked  him  in  his  hour  of  need.  It  was 
Millet  who  said : — "  The  trees  talk  to  each  other. 
I'm  sure  of  it.  I  can't  tell  you  what  they're  saying, 
but  I  know  they  are  not  making  puns."  High- 
water  mark  was  reached  here  with  an  Angelus 
changing  hands  at  something  like  twenty  thousand 
sterling,  with  rival  dealers  mopping  their  brows 
as  they  toiled  to  that  figure  by  five-hundred- 
pound  bids.  It  was  the  same,  to  some  extent,  with 
father  Corot,  though  he  lived  to  net  enough  for 
the  satisfaction  of  his  heroically  simple  wants. 
There  was,  however,  less  disappointment  in  the 
long  run,  because  in  matters  of  this  sort  the  French 
are  not  so  easily  deceived.  Their  second  and 
their  third  best  men,  who  had  been  made  to  rank 
as  first  raters,  took  their  proper  place,  and  the 


PROVINCES  AND  METROPOLE        133 

practice  of  booming  for  the  rise  came  sooner  to 
its  inevitable  end. 

The  authority  of  our  picture  dealer  over  his 
customer  in  his  hey-day  was  one  of  the  strangest 
things.  It  was  quite  spiritual  in  its  nature.  The 
man  who  could  hold  his  own  with  the  best  on 
'Change  became  as  a  child  when  he  passed  into 
the  show-rooms.  The  very  shopman  was  almost 
his  priestly  guide.  He  took  charge  of  him,  led 
him  round  the  gallery  and  told  him  what  he  really 
wanted  to  buy.  It  was  almost  hypnotic  in  its 
power  of  suggestion.  The  choice  of  course  was 
always  in  favour  of  the  stocks  on  hand.  Two  or 
three  names  were  in  vogue  at  a  time,  and  the 
client  was  given  to  understand  by  many  a  hint 
freely  garnished  with  the  current  cant  of  criticism 
that  he  had  better  secure  his  bargain  at  once. 
His  social  vanity  helped  to  effect  his  ruin.  His 
neighbour  and  friendly  rival  in  such  acquisitions 
had  secured  a  masterpiece  of  the  moment,  and 
here  was  a  providential  chance  of  getting  some- 
thing by  the  same  sure  hand.  In  this  way  some 
bought  simply  for  ostentation,  and  without  a 
thought  of  gain.  Collectors  must  be  in  the  fashion 
like  other  people,  and  it  is  peculiarly  hard  to  have 
to  look  foolish  on  your  own  hearth.  The  dealers 
themselves  no  doubt  often  acted  in  perfect  good  faith : 
they  might  have  used  Johnson's  plea: — ignorance, 
sheer  ignorance  !  But  the  faith  of  their  victims 
became  a  positive  superstition.  In  one  case  I 
remember  a  certain  picture  was  the  Naboth's 
vineyard  to  a  friend  of  the  owner  :  he  yearned 
for  it.  "  Will  you  part  with  it  ?  "  he  asked.  "  Well, 


134  MY  HARVEST 

no,  but  if  ever  I  do  you  can  have  it  at  cost  price." 
It  was  loyally  offered  in  that  way  some  time  after, 
but  the  other  now  fought  shy.  It  was  then  rebought 
by  a  dealer,  and  soon  resold  at  a  handsome  profit 
to  the  very  man  who  had  declined  it.  He  mis- 
trusted his  own  judgment,  and  he  cheerfully  paid 
the  extra  price  to  have  it  confirmed  by  a  shop- 
walker. 


CHAPTER  X 
REPUBLICAN   FRANCE 

MY  cockney  craving  for  a  capital  led  me  again 
to  Paris.  I  resigned  at  the  Guardian,  and 
made  the  great  venture — for  the  moment  on  but 
slender  encouragement  in  assured  work. 

I  took  an  apartment  in  the  Rue  Galilee  by  the 
Arc  de  Triomphe,  and,  armed  with  a  few  intro- 
ductions, set  out  on  the  pleasant  task  of  spying 
the  richness  of  the  land  from  the  point  of  view  of 
a  settler.  France  was  rising  to  her  feet  again, 
after  the  war ;  and,  while  retaining  their  cut  and 
fashion,  sending  all  her  institutions  to  the  repairing 
shop.  It  was  a  great  opportunity  for  the  corre- 
spondent who  was  worth  his  salt.  But  I  was  no 
correspondent  as  yet,  only  an  outsider,  waiting 
for  an  opening,  a  very  different  thing.  The  men 
on  the  establishments  were  few,  and  they  ranked 
as  the  heads  of  their  branch  of  the  calling. 

Everything  was  now  in  a  state  of  change,  the 
foreign  correspondence  with  the  rest.  The  men 
in  possession  were  of  what  I  may  call  the  middle 
period.  I  had  profited  much  before  starting  by 
the  counsels  of  my  old  friend,  John  Fraser  Cork- 
ran,  who  had  retired  to  London  after  a  long  resi- 
dence in  France.  He  had  represented  The  Morn- 
ing Herald,  in  Paris,  for  years,  and  was  the  type 

135 


136  MY  HARVEST 

and  model  of  the  great  correspondents  of  the  old 
school.  His  wife,  a  woman  of  stately  beauty  and 
wide  literary  culture,  had  in  her  salon,  taken  charge 
of  the  social  part  of  his  work.  They  were  of  the 
first  great  period — the  reign  of  Louis  Philippe,  the 
Republic  of  1848,  the  coup  ftetat  and  the  Second 
Empire.  Victor  Hugo  had  come  up  in  literature 
— he  was  a  peer  of  France  of  the  Liberal  Monarchy 
— Alfred  de  Vigny  was  going  down,  much  to  his 
disgust,  Lamartine  had  fretted  his  hour  on  the 
stage  of  politics,  Balzac  was  still  busy.  All  were 
of  Mrs.  Corkran's  circle  in  the  French  capital  not 
as  celebrities  to  be  interviewed,  but  as  friends  by 
the  fireside.  Thackeray  was  their  closest  intimate, 
the  fairy  godfather  of  their  children,  the  man  who 
found  the  knife  and  fork  always  ready  for  the 
happy  chance  of  his  company  at  a  meal.  He  was 
still  brooding  over  big  work  while  taking  his  luck 
with  the  trifles  that  came  to  hand.  One  day  he 
had  this  to  say  to  his  hosts  :  "I  think  I'm  safe 
for  a  good  second  rate  at  last." — Vanity  Fair  was 
in  the  printer's  hands. 

At  that  time  no  correspondent  used  the  tele- 
graph wire  ;  I  doubt  if  there  was  one  to  use.  They 
wrote  long  letters  hot  with  the  impression  of 
things  seen  and  lived,  and  where  there  was  need 
of  haste,  they  hired  post-chaises,  and  set  off  for 
Calais  on  their  own  account,  to  catch  the  mail 
boat.  It  was  a  matter  of  days  and  nights  of  cease- 
less travel,  of  reckless  and  lavish  bargains  with 
the  post-houses  on  the  road,  of  neck-and-neck  races 
in  genial  rivalry  for  the  chance  of  a  first  bid  for 
the  last  relay  left  in  the  stable,  each  flourishing  a 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE  137 

mocking  farewell  to  the  other  with  his  packet,  as 
he.  forged  ahead.  On  the  road  back  they  shared 
the  victor's  chaise,  with  frequent  halts  for  an 
omelette  and  a  bottle  in  the  old  inns  of  old  towns 
—the  best  chums  in  the  world.  In  this  way  they 
often  beat  the  official  couriers  from  the  embassies, 
and  gave  Downing  Street  itself  first  news,  with 
many  warm  acknowledgments  in  return. 

Much  of  this  had  changed  when  I  went  back  to 
Paris  :  the  wire  had  come  to  town,  but  only  as  a 
luxury  in  scrappy  messages.  Its  use,  even  in  that 
way,  carried  with  it  such  a  sense  of  daring  novelty, 
and  of  profanely  expressed  contempt  for  the 
expenses,  that  The  Daily  Telegraph  made  its  first 
coup  with  its  title.  The  letters  were  still  written, 
but  they  were  sent  by  post,  and  over  and  above 
that  they  were  written  at  the  cafe  in  lieu  of  an 
office.  The  correspondent  actually  rented  a  whole 
table  to  himself  at  a  place  within  easy  reach  of  the 
central  post,  and  his  myrmidons  came  and  went, 
with  last  items  of  news  to  fill  the  fat  envelope  to 
the  bursting  point,  up  to  the  last  minute  of  the  last 
quarter  of  an  hour. 

The  third  and  final  change  came  with  the 
correspondent's  office,  also  at  times  his  place  of 
residence,  in  some  spacious  suite  of  rooms,  with 
the  title  of  the  paper  in  huge  gilt  letters  on  his 
balcony,  as  a  bye-product  of  advertisement  for 
the  world  at  large.  The  Daily  Telegraph  set  this 
fashion,  at  a  corner  of  the  Boulevard  and  the  Place 
de  VOpera.  The  Standard  followed  the  example  at 
the  corner  opposite,  The  Daily  News  was  near 
in  the  rue  du  Quatre  Septembre.  In  point  of  style, 


138  MY  HARVEST 

it  was  a  great  improvement  on  the  old  system  of 
a  business  address  no  better  than  '  Cafe  de  la  Pro- 
vidence, first  table  on  the  left.'  The  correspondent 
could  now  receive  in  state.  He  was  no  longer 
obliged  to  go  to  the  ministries  for  his  news  ;  they 
often  came  to  him,  and  were  admitted  only  on 
formalities  as  solemn  as  their  own.  A  man  in 
black  answered  the  bell,  led  the  way  to  the  waiting- 
room,  and  came  back  to  relieve  the  tension  of 
expectancy  with  a  '  not  at  home  '  or  4  will  you 
walk  this  way  ?  '  The  very  furniture  grew  im- 
pressive as  you  neared  the  shrine  :  you  felt  that 
you  were  in  the  inner  sanctum  of  a  department 
of  state.  To  this  period  belonged  the  great 
Blowitz  of  The  Times,  Campbell  Clarke  of  The 
Telegraph,  and  the  Crawfords  of  The  Daily  News. 

I  can  only  treat  the  last  as  a  dual  personality, 
for  Mrs.  Crawford  was  to  the  full  as  important, 
to  put  it  mildly,  as  the  man  who  had  given  her 
the  name  by  which  she  was  so  widely  known. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  towards  the  last,  she  was  the 
correspondent  and  the  correspondence.  She  had 
extraordinary  facility  with  the  pen.  She  wrote 
with  malice  in  the  French  sense,  that  is  to  say 
with  humour,  dash  and  point.  The  sex  attributes 
of  mind,  as  commonly  generalized,  seemed  to 
have  changed :  hers  was  the  will  behind  the 
instrument,  the  address,  the  energy,  the  power 
to  face  the  world.  Under  growing  infirmities,  his 
part  declined  to  the  practice  of  the  domestic 
virtues.  He  was  a  dignified  gentlemanlike  person 
who  had  been  a  good  hand  in  his  day,  but  that  day 
was  gone  ;  and  since  he  could  no  longer  fill  the 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE  139 

part  of  the  new  man  of  the  period,  it  was  filled 
for  him  in  their  common  interest  by  his  partner, 
as  the  new  woman.  For  The  Daily  News  she  wrote 
one  kind  of  political  letter  befitting  the  gravity  of 
the  subject,  and  for  Truth  quite  another,  a  perfect 
storehouse  of  the  anecdote  of  the  day  as  it  bore 
on  the  drama  of  public  life.  She  knew  all  the 
leading  men,  especially  on  the  Republican  side  : 
Gambetta  was  often  to  be  met  at  her  luncheon 
table.  With  this,  she  produced  endless  articles 
for  the  reviews  British  and  American,  and  I  think 
had  another  correspondence  for  a  New  York  paper. 
It  was  an  all  -  devouring  activity.  Some  of  the 
work  had  the  blemishes  of  haste,  none  of  it  was 
less  than  workmanlike.  There  was  a  powerful 
mind  behind  it,  too  often  doing  less  than  justice 
to  itself,  but — one  must  live  !  A  chance  word  of 
hers  once  put  me  on  the  track  of  an  estimate  of 
character  in  a  common  friend,  at  which  I  had  been 
tinkering  for  years.  She  was  handsome,  but  in  a 
mannish  way — a  big,  powerful  head,  lips  apt  for  a 
smile  or  a  resolve,  a  solid  block  of  brow,  with 
sparkling  Irish  eyes  to  light  its  recesses  with 
promise  of  good  fellowship  and  entertainment.  As 
she  advanced  in  age  she  looked  like  a  marquise  of 
the  old  school,  with  a  mass  of  silvery  white  hair — 
warranted  natural — for  the  indispensable  effect  of 
the  peruke. 

In  her  husband's  interest  she  fought  the  great 
Blowitz  in  a  struggle  for  the  primacy  of  the  Press 
gallery  at  the  Assembly.  In  their  relations  with 
the  questor  of  that  body  the  correspondents  were 
represented  by  Crawford,  appointed  by  the  suffrages 


140  MY  HARVEST 

of  his  colleagues.  Blowitz  sighed  for  the  post, 
and  began  to  make  interest  with  the  little  con- 
stituency for  the  next  sessional  election.  Craw- 
ford's prospects  looked  poor,  but  when  the  lady 
entered  into  the  fray,  they  soon  improved.  She 
interviewed  the  authorities,  she  wrought  by  turns 
on  the  hopes  and  fears  of  the  constituency,  she 
stuck  at  nothing,  and  she  won.  The  great  one 
bated  no  jot  of  grandeur  in  defeat.  When  he  saw 
how  things  were  going,  he  took  care  to  cast  his 
vote  on  the  winning  side,  with  compliments 
addressed  to  the  hearts  of  his  supporters  by 
inference  at  the  expense  of  their  heads.  Hely 
Bowes  of  The  Standard  took  another  pinch  of  snuff 
and  proposed  a  dinner  of  reconciliation  ;  Campbell 
Clarke  assented  with  the  smile  that  probably  clung 
to  him  even  in  his  dreams. 

France  was  once  more  in  the  fullest  activity  of 
all  her  energies.  While  the  statesmen  shaped  her 
government,  brought  the  army  back  to  life,  and 
began  to  educate  her  people,  others  were  at  work 
on  the  reconstruction  of  the  salon  on  a  Republican 
basis.  They  found  their  leader  in  another  remark- 
able woman,  Juliette  Lamber,  the  pen  name  of 
Madame  Adam. 

If  Madame  Bonaparte-Patterson  had  lived  to 
know  Juliette  Lamber  she  would  not  have  despaired 
of  republicanism  as  a  means  of  social  success.  The 
latter  was  rich,  charming,  and  she  kept  open  house 
for  the  republic  in  her  drawing-room  in  the  Boule- 
vard Poissonniere — of  all  places  in  the  world. 
She  might  almost  be  said  to  have  revived  the 
salon ;  for  what  with  the  war  and  the  change  of 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE  141 

manners,  that  essentially  French  institution  had 
long  been  in  a  languishing  state.  She  certainly 
revived  it  in  the  interest  of  the  new  regime  and  so 
trumped  the  last  card  of  monarchical  reaction. 
The  Legitimists  said  that  you  could  never  have  a 
salon  without  an  aristocracy  ;  the  Orleanists,  that 
you  could  never  have  it  without  wealth  as  well ; 
and  of  course  both  implied  that  you  need  not  look 
for  wealth  or  birth  outside  their  ranks.  Madame 
Adam  had  one  at  least  of  these  qualifications  :  her 
second  husband,  the  Senator,  was  a  Republican 
when  it  was  rather  a  bold  thing  for  a  man  of  means 
to  wear  the  badge  of  that  party.  He  was  at 
Gambetta's  side  in  the  darkest  hours  of  the  war  ; 
and  when  he  died  he  left  his  political  faith  to  his 
wife.  The  other  part  of  the  heritage  consisted  of 
some  odd  millions  of  francs.  People  came  to  her 
to  talk  politics,  art,  literature  ;  and  that  of  course 
was  her  salon  in  the  germ. 

She  began  in  a  small  way,  soon  after  the  close  of 
the  Communist  troubles,  and  little  by  little  her 
house  became  a  sort  of  antechamber  of  Parliament. 
There  were  two  conditions  of  entry  ;  position,  and 
I  was  going  to  say,  faith  in  the  new  constitution, 
but  that  is  hardly  exact.  If  you  could  not  bless 
the  existing  form  of  government,  you  had  at  least 
to  refrain  from  doing  the  other  thing.  As  time 
wore  on  she  exercised  a  large  hospitality,  and  was 
better  able  to  dictate  terms. 

But  this  anticipates  :  there  were  moments  when 
she  kept  a  social  conventicle  for  republicans  almost 
at  the  risk  of  her  personal  safety.  A  night  or  so 
after  Marshal  MacMahon's  coup  known  as  The 


142  MY  HARVEST 

Sixteenth  of  May,  a  few  men  gathered  in  her 
rooms  with  every  prospect,  as  they  thought,  of 
being  hurried  off  to  gaol  when  they  reached  the 
street.  Louis  Blanc,  Gambetta,  Girardin  were  of 
the  number.  It  was  a  moment  of  the  wildest 
rumours  :  every  newcomer  had  his  story  of  the 
intention  of  the  Broglie  Cabinet  to  make  a  clean 
sweep  of  the  party.  One  had  heard  from  a  friend 
in  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  that  the  list  of 
proscription  had  been  drawn  up.  Another  had 
seen  the  police  waiting  at  the  doors  of  the  destined 
victims.  All  this  was  a  little  absurd,  perhaps — 
so  was  the  talk  of  the  hunted  beasts  in  the  fable 
— but  we  must  remember  that  many  of  Madame 
Adam's  guests  had  felt  the  teeth  of  the  trap  in 
the  time  of  Louis  Napoleon.  Louis  Blanc  was  one 
of  the  few  who  declared  there  was  nothing  in  the 
new  scare.  He  demonstrated  logically  that  there 
could  not  be  another  coup  d'etat,  as  circumstances 
had  changed.  The  Man  of  December  succeeded 
because  the  Assembly  was  unpopular  ;  the  present 
Assembly  being  popular,  MacMahon  would  have 
no  chance.  The  logician  was  right :  for  once  in  a 
way,  the  circumstances  had  listened  to  reason. 
When  Gambetta  left  about  midnight,  the  others, 
at  the  bidding  of  their  hostess,  saw  him  safe  home. 
At  a  dinner  given  at  her  house  some  time  after  he 
proposed  her  health  in  highly  eulogistic  terms,  as 
one  who  had  been  the  friend  of  the  republic  in 
adversity,  and  who  would  be  its  ornament  in  its 
brighter  hour. 

It  was  a  salon  of  the  bourgeoisie  of  course,  but 
that  was  its  strength  on  one  side,  if  its  weakness 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE  143 

elsewhere.  The  republic  was  no  longer  to  be 
identified  with  mob  rule.  People  began  to  go  to 
her  for  what  they  could  get,  a  sure  sign  of  power  : 
her  friendship  was  the  short  cut  to  a  prefecture, 
for  ministers  were  understood  to  be  at  her  beck 
and  call.  Of  the  many  women  fit  to  bear  them 
company  few  were  allowed  to  cross  the  threshold. 
She  managed  to  do  without  them  for  awhile  :  she 
had  some  taste  in  art,  and  her  skill  in  literature 
was  attested  by  many  clever  books.  Gradually 
her  house  won  the  repute  of  a  place  where  you 
met  everybody  who  was  in  the  movement.  I 
recall  a  few  figures — Gambetta — till  he  gave  it 
up  on  the  conviction  that  one  leader  of  the  party 
was  enough,  and  that  if  the  lady  continued  her 
patronage,  there  would  be  two — Freycinet,  Leon 
Say,  Galliffet,  Lesseps,  Girardin,  Edmond  About, 
Flaubert,  Turguenieff,  Leconte  de  Lisle,  Bonnat, 
Bastien  Lepage,  all  of  them  now  but  ghosts  I  have 
met. 

La  Nouvelle  Revue  had  its  birth  in  this  salon.  It 
was  to  be  the  organ  of  the  young  republic  in 
periodical  literature.  The  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes 
had  become  fossilized.  Every  number  seemed  to 
have  been  dipped  in  the  fountain  at  Vichy  that 
turns  everything  to  stone.  It  was  Orleanist  in  its 
origin  and  it  is  still  far  from  being  frankly  Re- 
publican to-day.  With  its  aid  Madame  Adam 
"  arrived  "  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  term. 

What  a  change  !  She  began  life  as  a  sort  of 
uncertified  assistant  to  her  father,  a  country 
doctor  ;  then  she  was  given  in  marriage  to  the 
village  notary,  much  her  senior ;  and  eventually, 


144  MY  HARVEST 

finding  both  the  notary  and  the  village  insupport- 
able, she  went  to  Paris  to  live  by  her  pen.  She 
had  some  reading,  more  wit,  and  still  more  feeling, 
for  her  stock-in-trade.  The  feeling  stood  her  in 
best  stead.  Proudhon  had  delivered  an  attack  on 
women  in  the  form  of  certain  Idees  eminently 
uncomplimentary  to  the  sex.  Juliette  Lamber 
read  it  with  indignation,  and  replied  to  it  with 
spirit.  Her  Idees  Anti-Proudhoniennes  contended, 
in  a  series  of  happy  paradoxes,  for  the  perfect 
equality  of  woman.  The  book  at  once  attracted 
the  nattering  notice  of  George  Sand,  and  from 
that  moment  Juliette  Lamber  was  "  launched." 
The  two  formed  a  friendship  only  severed  by 
death  ;  and  the  younger  rapidly  produced  volume 
after  volume  which  showed  that  she  had  not  known 
the  author  of  Indiana  in  vain.  She  wrote  on 
many  subjects,  but  a  passionate  vindication  of 
the  claims  of  women,  as  these  are  understood  in 
France,  was  always  her  main  theme. 

She  threw  herself  into  the  new  enterprise  with 
her  accustomed  ardour.  Her  time  was  laid  out 
with  scientific  precision  :  she  rose  early  to  read 
manuscript,  to  receive  contributors,  to  dictate  to 
secretaries.  She  saw  her  milliner  at  breakfast, 
and  despatched  the  meal  and  her  orders  together, 
avoiding  all  waste  of  time  in  trying  on  her  own 
garments,  by  criticizing  their  fit  on  a  dummy 
moulded  exactly  to  her  shape.  The  work  went  on 
till  it  was  time  for  the  afternoon  drive,  and  dinner, 
followed  by  the  party  or  the  play.  The  small  hours 
often  found  her  once  more  at  her  desk.  A  short 
break  of  fitful  slumber  divided  day  from  day  of 


REPUBLICAN  FRANCE  145 

this  convict  toil.  Of  course  it  did  not  last  long  : 
there  came  a  time  when  her  doctor  offered  her 
the  alternative  of  rest  or  death.  It  produced  less 
effect  than  he  expected;  but  when  he  threatened 
her  with  the  loss  of  her  good  looks  she  at  once  gave 
way.  She  still  kept  a  part  of  the  review  to  herself, 
especially  devoted  to  the  smashing  up  of  Prince 
Bismarck,  and  she  dreamed  even  of  forming  a  kind 
of  social  counterpoise  to  his  league  of  the  three 
empires.  She  undertook  missions  of  her  own  to 
Rome,  to  Vienna,  to  Buda-Pesth,  to  Petersburg, 
wherever  she  saw  a  chance  of  doing  her  enemy 
an  ill  turn.  It  was  the  boudoir  against  the  Chan- 
cellor's cabinet ;  and  unequal  as  the  contest  looks 
and  was,  the  former  sometimes  contrived  to  score. 
At  Petersburg  she  met  the  impressionable  Skobe- 
leff,  and  he  was  not  the  man  to  suffer  her  departure 
to  put  an  end  to  their  acquaintance.  He  was  soon 
in  Paris  ;  and  he  had  not  long  frequented  her 
salon  when  he  indulged  in  a  furious  outburst 
against  Germany,  and,  by  implication,  the  alliance 
that  was  the  darling  project  of  the  Chancellor's 
life — with  what  ultimate  effect,  we  have  lately  seen. 
He  was  instantly  ordered  home  by  his  anxious 
master,  but  the  mischief  was  done.  It  was  easier 
to  recall  him  than  to  recall  his  words,  which  seemed 
to  pledge  the  nation,  of  which  he  was  the  hero, 
and  its  whole  military  caste,  to  undying  hostility 
to  the  German  name. 

It  pleased  her  to  think  that  Bismarck  stood  in 
awe  of  her,  and  that  he  always  ran  through  his 
copy  of  her  review  to  the  cry  of  4  that  woman !  that 
woman ! '  and  tore  out  what  was  left  of  his  hair. 


146  MY  HARVEST 

She  had  her  ups  and  downs  with  her  own  people 
of  Paris.  At  one  time  they  gave  her  a  street  to  her 
name — Rue  Juliette  Lamber,  by  the  fortifications. 
At  another  time,  in  the  course  of  a  tiff,  they  took 
it  away  from  her,  eventually,  I  believe,  making 
amends  by  its  restoration.  It  is  a  way  they  have. 
In  the  course  of  the  Franco-German  war,  when 
General  Uhrich  began  his  gallant  defence  of 
Strasburg,  no  honour  of  this  sort  was  too  high 
for  him.  With  the  first  reports  of  his  successes  he 
had  his  Rue  Uhrich  as  a  matter  of  course.  As 
things  still  improved  (in  the  papers)  he  was  pro- 
moted to  an  avenue,  and  presently  he  rose  to  a 
boulevard.  But  he  had  hardly  reached  it  when  the 
luck  began  to  turn.  The  Germans  captured  a 
fort,  and  with  that  the  General  lost  his  boulevard, 
and  was  put  back  one  to  his  avenue.  As  matters 
went  from  bad  to  worse,  he  lost  even  this  in  its 
turn,  until  once  more  he  had  nothing  to  his  name 
but  the  street  with  which  he  set  out  on  his  career 
of  glory.  The  news  of  the  capitulation  I  believe 
stripped  him  even  of  that,  for  a  time,  if  not  for 
ever. 


CHAPTER  XI 
KING  VICTOR  HUGO 

"OEPUBLIC  if  you  like,  but  still  with  Hugo 
JL\)  for  its  uncrowned  king,  by  virtue  alike  of 
his  genius  and  of  his  long  record  of  success  without 
a  break.  He  had  gone  into  exile  after  the  coup 
d'etat ;  the  overthrow  of  the  empire  naturally 
restored  him  to  the  throne  of  literature  in  his  good 
city  of  Paris.  A  mighty  writer,  from  his  youth  he 
had  scaled  the  highest  peaks  of  glowing  rhetoric 
ever  achieved  by  man.  He  was  of  the  very  few 
who  have  never  known  what  it  is  to  be  other  than 
famous  :  in  his  teens  he  was  the  enfant  sublime  of 
the  apostrophe  of  Chateaubriand.  Yet  there  was 
something  wanting  in  him,  for  all  that.  He  was 
another  Timotheus  of  the  Dryden  ode  :  he  could 
touch  to  any  mood  he  pleased,  though  he  might 
have  been  poor  company  for  the  actual  contact 
with  life.  Yet  in  this  defect  he  was  perhaps  more 
truly  himself,  more  truly  the  artist.  The  word  of 
power  rarely  carries  with  it  the  knack  of  the  deed  : 
the  artificers  of  the  emotion  seem  quite  a  class 
apart.  I  was  greatly  tickled  once  by  an  obscure 
entry  in  the  Paris  directory  : — "  So  and  So — 
Maker  of  Batons  for  the  Marshals  of  France."  Is 
your  poet's  function  as  humble  as  that  ? 

He   is  best   seen,    I   think,  if  not  always  seen 

147 


148  MY  HARVEST 

at  his  best,  in  the  volume  on  his  grandchildren 
George  and  Jeanne  —  George,  to  Anglicize  it, 
Jeanne,  to  let  it  alone — the  weakness  of  his  old 
age.  The  French  public  that  humoured  him  in 
every  foible  was  more  than  indulgent  in  this. 
Wherever  he  went,  it  was  understood  the  children 
must  go  also.  They  were  all  that  was  left  to  bind 
him  to  the  most  beautiful  part  of  his  past.  Glory 
he  might  still  have,  but  without  these  children 
there  would  have  been  none  of  his  own  race  to 
receive  or  return  his  caress  in  old  age.  His  sons 
had  passed  away,  not  before  one  of  them,  Charles, 
had  given  high  promise  as  a  man  of  letters.  He 
left  his  two  children  and  his  widow  to  the  care  of 
the  grandfather ;  and  from  that  moment  the 
old  man  and  the  boy  and  girl  were  virtually  in- 
separable. These  precocious  charges  shared  his 
public  triumphs,  before  they  were  quite  old  enough 
to  leave  his  knee  without  help.  George  was  hardly 
out  of  the  nursery  when  he  supped  with  actresses. 
It  was  not  quite  so  compromising  as  it  seems  : 
a  hundred  others  were  at  the  board  ;  and  they  met 
to  celebrate  the  revival  of  Ruy  Bias.  Jeanne  had 
seen  a  whole  population  almost  delirious  with  joy 
under  her  windows  ;  but  it  was  only  because  she 
sat  nestling  up  to  her  grandfather,  when  all  Paris 
turned  out  to  celebrate  his  last  birthday  but  one. 
There  was  another  side  to  the  picture  :  as  Hugo 
was  king,  these  children  were  no  strangers  to  the 
boredom  of  royalty.  Homage  was  all  very  well, 
but  sometimes  it  stood  between  them  and  their 
tops  and  dolls.  It  was  unpleasant  to  be  dogged 
by  reporters  if  you  went  only  so  far  as  the  Grand 


KING  VICTOR  HUGO  149 

Magasin  du  Louvre  for  a  New  Year's  toy.  It  was 
impossible  to  be  always  equal  to  the  occasion, 
when  you  were  expected  to  behave  as  the  grand- 
children of  The  Light  of  France.  There  were 
moments  when  the  infant  pair  felt  an  irresistible 
temptation  to  look  stupid ;  and  it  was  evidently 
a  relief  to  them  when  they  grew  too  old  to  be 
caught  and  cuddled  for  purposes  of  affectionate 
display.  To  the  last  the  old  poet's  hands  would 
feel  for  them  among  the  crowd  at  his  receptions, 
even  when  he  was  not  quite  sure  on  whom  they 
would  fall.  But  George  would  straighten  his  high 
collar,  and  Jeanne  smooth  her  long  frock  as  they 
slipped  out  of  reach. 

For  them  Hugo  wrote,  or  to  them  he  dedicated, 
his  volume  on  The  Art  of  Being  a  Grandfather.  It 
was  quite  simple  :  you  had  only  to  spoil  your 
grandchildren.  The  spoiling  began  early ;  there 
are  verses  to  Jeanne  at  Guernsey,  in  the  time  of 
exile.  It  is  her  entry  into  his  song,  and,  in  free 
translation,  it  is  so  entitled.  She  is  talking  to  her- 
self— to  herself  and  to  a  few  passing  acquaintance, 
namely  the  sea,  the  woods,  the  mists,  the  flowers, 
the  firmament.  What  is  she  saying  ?  Who  knows  ? 
But  it  seems  satisfactory,  for  it  ends  with  a  smile. 
"  The  Other  One  "  is  soon  called  to  his  side,  and 
soon  again  he  is  bending  over  both,  as  they  lie 
asleep,  and  is  accounting  for  the  fact  that  the  arms 
of  Jeanne  are  not  in  evidence,  on  the  supposition 
that  she  is  still  half  wings.  He  has  seen  every- 
thing, and  he  too  is  able  to  say  that  all  is  vanity 
— all  but  love  and  a  nest. 

Next  morning  their  voices  will  be  the  first  to 


150  MY  HARVEST 

reach  him  through  the  open  window.  A  little 
later,  George  will  be  shaking  the  sawdust  out  of 
one  of  his  puppets  to  discover  the  anatomical 
cause  of  an  injury  to  the  springs  ;  and  still  later 
the  whole  thing  will  be  transferred  to  Hugo,  with 
a  piece  of  twine,  for  immediate  repair.  Whatever 
it  pleases  them  to  order,  he  must  do.  At  three 
Jeanne  gives  him  clearly  to  understand  that  there 
must  be  no  nonsense  when  she  appears  before  him 
in  the  all-conquering  brightness  of  her  new  frock. 
He  yields  at  once,  acknowledging  her  as  "  ma 
contemplation,  mon  parfum,  mon  ivresse " ;  and 
when,  some  time  after,  he  hears  that  she  is  in 
solitary  confinement  on  dry  bread,  for  a  breach 
of  domestic  law,  he  steals  at  once  to  her  cell  with 
a  pot  of  preserve.  This  is  too  much  for  the  powers 
charged  with  the  salvation  of  society  in  the  im- 
mediate neighbourhood  of  his  hearthstone,  and 
their  voices  are  loud  in  complaint. 

The  child  knows  you  !  you'll  ruin  her — laughing 
every  time  we  frown  !  You  upset  everything  ! 

It  is  all  too  true  ;  and  he  has  just  enough  grace 
left  to  take  the  lesson  to  heart. 

Put  me  in  her  place. 

You  deserve  it  certainly. 

"  If  they  do,"  whispers  the  infant  from  her 
corner,  "  I  will  bring  you  some  jam." 

Was  it  always  like  that  ?  One  hopes  not  for  the 
writer's  even  more  than  for  the  children's  sake  : 
the  poem  was  at  once  the  child  of  his  old  age, 
and  the  childishness.  The  spoiling  was  hardly  a 
success  in  its  results,  to  judge  by  certain  not  very 
edifying  family  quarrels  that  took  place  when  the 


KING  VICTOR  HUGO  151 

young  people  attained  to  what  sometimes  failed 
to  be  years  of  discretion.  Perhaps  they  found  the 
obscurity  of  the  new  life  as  wearisome  as  the  glitter 
of  the  old. 

When  he  returned  to  Paris,  every  stranger  who 
had  the  slightest  title  to  his  regard,  and  many  who 
had  not,  sought  him  out.  In  one  aspect,  he  was 
a  kind  of  pope  of  democracy  in  the  abstract,  though 
in  his  day  he  had  dearly  loved  to  be  a  lord  ;  and 
the  pilgrimage  for  his  benediction  was  quite  a 
ceremony.  On  his  return  from  exile,  he  at  first 
lived  in  the  Rue  de  Clichy,  and  it  was  understood 
that  the  temple  of  his  abode  was  open  to  wor- 
shippers every  night  for  a  service  often  running 
into  the  small  hours.  The  very  slightest  introduc- 
tion would  do,  and  even  no  introduction  at  all. 
It  was  rather  disappointing  for  most  worshippers, 
especially  for  those  from  abroad,  who  expected  to 
find  a  writer  of  Hugo's  success  and  reputed  wealth 
living  in  a  fine  house.  You  had  to  mount  two  or 
three  flights  of  stairs  to  reach  the  shrine.  The  door 
was  opened  by  the  cook  in  her  apron,  who  led  you 
along  a  narrow  passage  past  her  kitchen  into  an 
ante-room.  If  you  came  before  ten,  you  had  to 
wait.  He  took  his  dinner  quite  as  seriously  as  his 
poetry,  and  besides  he  had  to  think  of  his  guests 
of  honour  at  the  board.  The  waiting-room  perhaps 
was  better  for  the  study  of  character.  There  you 
might  be  pretty  sure  to  find  the  venerable  inn- 
keeper of  Jersey  who  had  stood  up  for  him  when 
he  got  into  trouble  in  that  island  for  a  hasty  word, 
or  the  raw  correspondent  just  arrived,  or  the 
political  conspirator — nationality  and  even  politics 


152  MY  HARVEST 

no  object — or  the  enthusiastic  young  person  with 
her  album  under  her  arm.  The  foreign  poet,  of 
course,  was  rarely  to  seek — the  man  with  a  volume 
of  verse  and  a  special  dedication  primed  for  a 
point-blank  discharge. 

By  and  by  each  had  his  opportunity.  There 
was  a  stir  in  the  adjoining  room,  and  no  chamber- 
lain was  needed  to  announce — "  the  King  !  5:  You 
rose  and  linked  up  for  the  circle,  while  the  old  man 
passed  round,  peering  with  his  failing  eyesight 
into  every  face,  and  if  he  failed  to  recognize  it, 
still  saving  himself  by  his  ready  tongue,  which 
could  have  excited  the  sense  of  gratified  vanity 
in  an  image  of  stone.  Then  all  were  invited  to 
follow  him  into  the  drawing-room,  which  in  taste 
was  the  ante-room  intensified — a  hotch-potch  of 
curiosities  from  Europe  and  the  East,  arranged  by 
the  host  himself.  By  way  of  being  everything,  he 
was  his  own  upholsterer.  Here  you  joined  the 
people  who  had  dined,  led  by  Madame  Lockroy, 
the  mother  of  George  and  Jeanne,  and  now,  by  a 
second  marriage,  the  wife  of  the  well-known  deputy. 
Paul  Meurice,  the  writer,  almost  as  aged  as  Hugo, 
was  sure  to  be  in  attendance,  as  manager  of  all  the 
master's  business  affairs.  Young  Coppee,  the  poet, 
was  often  at  hand ;  and  sometimes  the  scene  was 
graced  by  Renan,  Leconte  de  Lisle,  and  other  men 
of  that  literary  rank. 

Then  came  the  ritual  of  the  occasion,  the  high 
function,  the  blessing  of  His  Holiness,  as  the  Pope 
of  letters.  The  poet  with  the  dedication,  the 
nymph  with  the  album,  or  the  foreign  patriot 
advanced  in  turn,  by  invitation,  to  share  the 


KING  VICTOR  HUGO  153 

pontifical  seat  on  a  small  sofa  that  just  held  two, 
and  to  pour  their  several  tributes  of  flattery  into 
his  ear,  returned  in  kind  with  a  flow  of  sentiment 
steeped  as  in  the  oils  of  unction.  His  urbanity 
and  desire  to  please  never  failed  ;  the  one  easy  con- 
dition was  a  return  in  kind.  While  this  was  going 
on,  the  inner  circle  of  family  and  friends  kept 
strictly  to  themselves.  It  was  partly  in  self- 
defence  ;  so  many  new  people  came  every  week 
that  it  was  impossible  to  keep  account  of  them, 
but  partly  also  because  they  did  not  know  better. 
Their  mode  of  receiving  was  essentially  old- 
fashioned.  In  certain  ranks  in  France  people 
keep  much  apart  on  these  occasions,  the  ladies  on 
one  side  of  the  room,  the  men  on  the  other ;  and 
the  breaking  of  any  fresh  ground  in  social  intimacy 
is  understood  to  be  a  serious  thing. 

One  thing  was  forgotten,  in  all  this — that  the 
host  was  not  made  of  cast  iron.  Hugo  was  a  very 
old  man,  and  the  frequent  receptions  following  the 
dinner  soon  proved  too  much  for  him.  His  family 
took  counsel  together,  removed  him  from  the 
centre  to  the  circumference  of  the  city,  and  shortened 
the  hours  of  hospitality  :  it  was  now  all  lights 
out  by  twelve.  He  exchanged  the  old  stuffy 
apartment  for  a  roomy  house  and  a  garden,  and 
the  change  tended  altogether  to  the  improvement 
of  his  health. 

He  was  an  extraordinary  mixture  of  diverse 
qualities  good  and  bad.  His  life  of  exile  in  the 
Channel  Islands  was  rather  a  disappointment  for 
even  some  of  his  worshippers — in  the  vast  sweep 
of  its  contemplations  of  nature,  man,  and  God, 


154  MY  HARVEST 

from  the  cliff  tops,  and  the  poverty  of  soul  in  its 
life  of  the  home.  Madame  Hugo  was  left  alone  to 
anatomize  the  melancholy  of  her  deserted  hearth- 
stone, while  he  led  the  throng  of  worshippers  to 
the  soirees  of  a  rival,  in  an  establishment  over  the 
way.  There  was  much  to  be  said  on  both  sides, 
but  the  situation  was  one  that  would  have  gone 
far  to  break  the  heart  of  a  poet  who  happened  to 
have  much  personal  use  for  his  own  aspirations. 

The  rival  accompanied  him  to  Paris  for  his 
triumphant  return.  A  silver-haired  valetudinarian 
of  the  apartment  of  the  Rue  de  Clichy,  was  all 
that  was  left  of  the  beautiful  actress  who  had 
created  some  parts  in  his  plays. 

He  died  as  he  had  lived,  in  the  limelight,  and 
to  the  very  last  with  his  unmatchable  sense  of 
the  scene  a  faire.  His  will  decreed  that  he  should 
be  buried,  like  the  poorest  of  the  poor,  in  a  deal 
coffin,  and  left  it  there.  The  Government  of  course 
placed  the  coffin  under  the  Arc  de  rEtoile,  and 
draped  it  with  the  spoil  of  the  Lyons  looms.  The 
funeral  surpassed  the  pomp  of  royalty.  The 
poverty  of  the  shell,  in  its  contrast  with  the 
splendour  of  its  trappings,  was  the  supreme  triumph 
of  the  antithesis  in  which  he  excelled.  The  body 
lay  there  all  night  in  the  glare  of  thousands  of 
torches  that  must  have  made  the  very  skies 
wonder  what  was  afoot  below.  Regiments  with 
bowed  heads  kept  the  vigil,  the  garrison  of  Paris 
turned  out  to  escort  him  to  the  grave  or  keep  the 
line.  He  died  "  warm  "  enough  to  have  treated 
himself  to  a  coffin  of  oak  :  after  providing  hand- 
somely for  his  relations,  he  was  able  to  leave 


KING  VICTOR  HUGO  155 

twenty-thousand  francs  to  the  poor.  Unfortunately 
he  forgot  to  sign  the  codicil. 

Does  it  come  to  this — the  poet,  only  for  the 
poem,  the  other  man  for  the  act  and  deed ;  the 
orator  with  a  bias  for  the  rear  of  battle,  and  on 
bad  terms  with  his  shield  ?  Or  does  it  demand  a 
wholly  new  estimate  of  the  value  of  the  oration 
and  the  song  ?  Are  great  men  to  be  reckoned  with 
only  in  their  works,  not  in  their  lives  ?  Even 
then,  some  of  them  might  hardly  bear  the  test, 
if  the  works  were  taken  in  their  entirety.  The 
Wagner  of  the  great  tetralogy  in  one  thing,  the 
Wagner  of  the  lampoon  on  the  starving  Paris  of 
the  siege  is  quite  another.  He  never  forgave  the 
French  an  early  indifference  to  his  music  which 
was  shared  wellnigh  by  all  the  world.  When  the 
war  came,  he  took  a  base  revenge  in  a  skit  on 
their  miseries,  which  makes  poor  reading  after 
the  rhapsodies  of  the  Ring,  and  yet  belongs  to 
the  all-round  view  of  the  man.  It  was  in  the  form 
of  a  little  drama  called  The  Capitulation  :  A  Comedy 
after  the  Antique,  and — to  do  Germany  justice — it 
was  rapidly  falling  into  oblivion  in  the  country  of 
its  origin,  when  the  vengeful  industry  of  M.  Tissot, 
the  author  of  Le  Pays  des  Milliards,  unearthed  it  to 
form  a  chapter  of  that  popular  work.  It  may  still 
bear  summary  quotation  here,  as  an  example  of  the 
literature  of  hatred  and  all  uncharitableness,  not 
to  say  of  the  crass  stupidity,  that  makes  wars. 

The  scene  represents  the  Place  de  1'Hotel  de 
Ville.  In  its  midst  rises  the  altar  of  the  Republic, 
ornamented  with  caps  of  liberty,  and,  in  the  rear, 
a  balcony — all  that  is  left  of  the  civic  edifice.  In 


156  MY  HARVEST 

the  foreground  are  the  colossal  statues  of  Stras- 
burg  and  of  Metz.  A  new  kind  of  prompter's 
box,  with  the  aperture  turned  towards  the  public, 
is  placed  in  front  of  the  altar. 

Victor  Hugo  emerges  from  this  opening  as 
from  a  subterranean.  He  wipes  his  forehead  and 
looks  around. 

Ah,  at  last  I  breathe  thee,  air  of  the  sacred  city. 
And  how  have  I  come  ?  By  the  sewers.  In 
following  them  I  have  struck  the  true  path  of 
civilization.  Yes,  I  am  here,  and  not  by  way  of 
the  Prussian  lines.  But  what  is  this  above  my 
head  ?  a  gibbet,  no ;  a  scaffold — perhaps  a  holy 
guillotine  ?  Where  is  the  Hotel  de  Ville  ? 

Faint  voices  from  below  the  stage.  Victor,  Victor, 
be  one  of  us. 

Hugo.  What's  that  ?  Who  calls  me  back  into 
the  sewers  ? 

He  tries  to  leave  the  sewer  to  join  the  National 
Guards,  but  he  is  held  firmly  by  the  heels  below. 
The  guards  take  him  by  the  hand,  and  each  side 
pulls  until  his  body  stretches  like  an  elastic  band 
— Wagner  trying  to  be  lively. — Suddenly  he  is 
contracted  by  a  violent  start  of  anguish.  The 
guards  lose  hold  ;  he  sinks  and  disappears. 

Chorus.     The  devil  has  him. 

Commandant.     Silence — Wake  the  Government. 

Chorus  (singing)  : 

General  Trochu,  le  Galerlen 
Que  fait  il  au  Mont  Valerien  ? 
Gouvernement !    Bombardement ! 
Bombardement !    Gouvernement ! 
Gouvernement !  Gouvernement  !  Gouvernement  ! — ment! — ment  ! 


KING  VICTOR  HUGO  157 

They  are  still  disputing  when  Nadar  appears, 
clad  in  a  limp  balloon,  to  the  great  terror  of  the 
spectators.  He  announces  himself  as  the  saviour 
of  the  republic ;  he  is  ready  to  pass  the  Prussian 
lines.  Gambetta,  who  has  taken  refuge  under  the 
table,  plucks  up  courage,  creeps  forth,  and  insists 
on  sharing  the  adventure.  The  chorus  applauds. 
The  dress  of  the  aeronaut  is  inflated  by  the  breath 
of  the  citizens  ;  he  mounts,  and  surveys  the  world 
— a  cheering  spectacle.  All  Europe  is  preparing 
to  intervene  in  favour  of  France — in  England 
'  the  Lords  and  Commons,'  here  the  Russians,  the 
Poles  and  the  Cossacks  ;  there  the  Spaniards,  the 
Portuguese  and  the  Jews.  (A  note  by  the  trans- 
lator explains  that  Wagner  is  the  deadly  enemy  of 
this  race,  and  has  written  a  pamphlet  against 
their  composers.) 

While  this  is  going  on  above  the  earth,  the 
delighted  spectators  hear  a  strange  noise — as  of 
the  clashing  of  kettles — from  below,  which  serves 
as  an  accompaniment  to  the  chant  of  the  spirits 
of  the  sewers. 

A  chorus  and  a  ballet  follow,  and  the  curtain 
falls  on  the  apotheosis  of  Victor  Hugo  amid  Bengal 
fires. 

Piteously,  gross  and  foolish  no  doubt,  though 
years  after  its  publication  in  Paris,  the  memory 
of  it  still  rankled  in  the  French  mind,  and  the 
first  attempt  to  introduce  the  Wagner  music  at 
the  Pasdeloup  concerts  nearly  led  to  a  riot. 


CHAPTER  XII 

A  RUSSIAN  REALIST 

I  HAD  kept  up  relations  with  the  New  York 
World,  and  as  the  result  of  some  experimental 
letters  I  became  its  resident  correspondent  in 
Paris.  I  worked  my  way  in  by  sending  them 
what  I  thought  their  people  wanted,  when  it  also 
happened  to  be  what  I  wanted  to  write  :  one 
must  think  a  little  of  one's  fellow  creatures,  after 
all.  This  I  have  always  found  the  best  of  intro- 
ductions. The  work  alone  must  do  it  in  the  main, 
and  editors  who  know  their  business  are  naturally 
of  that  way  of  thinking  too.  Paris,  and  a  paper 
ready  to  let  me  say  my  say  in  it !  What  more 
could  I  need  ? 

About  this  time  I  began  to  know  Verestchagin, 
the  Russian  painter.  He  had  a  studio  at  Maisons- 
Lafntte,  a  few  miles  from  Paris.  I  soon  came  to 
know  him  quite  well,  for  he  invited  study.  In 
regard,  at  least  to  his  native  Russia,  he  was  not  one, 
but  all  mankind's  epitome.  All  the  racial  strains 
were  in  him,  with  perhaps  a  little  too  much  of 
the  Tartar  for  the  perfect  harmony.  At  times 
he  seemed  quite  a  freshman  from  the  wilds — 
sudden  and  quick  in  quarrel,  snapshot  in  judg- 
ment, bitter  in  blame,  and  rather  contemptuous 

168 


A  RUSSIAN  REALIST  159 

of  the  "  manners  and  customs  of  modern  society," 
though  he  could  hold  his  own  there  when  he  liked. 
He  was  at  once  candid  and  crafty,  yet  both  without 
hypocrisy.  When  he  spoke,  it  was  often  to  rap 
out  his  thought  about  you  or  your  proceedings 
with  the  most  engaging  frankness  ;  when  he  held 
his  tongue,  you  had  nobody  to  thank  but  yourself 
if  he  got  the  better  of  you  :  there  was  no  false 
pretence.  When  he  gave  his  trust  it  was  whole- 
heartedly :  he  had  great  faith  in  the  English 
word.  It  is  not  an  amiable  character,  neither  is 
that  of  Bazarof  in  Turguenieff's  Fathers  and  Sons, 
but  it  is  very  Russian.  Geniality  was  not  in  the 
composition,  but  there  was  much  else  that  was 
downright  good. 

He  was  a  great  illustrator,  rather  than  an 
artist,  with  sheer  reality  for  his  end  and  aim. 
His  pictures  were  human  documents  in  oils,  that 
and  nothing  else  :  the  naked  truth  without  phrase. 
So  are  those  of  his  countryman  Repnin.  Look 
at  the  latter's  peasants  of  the  Volga  towing  the 
barge ;  nothing  picturesque  about  them,  mere 
human  beasts  of  burden  with  centuries  of  in- 
breeding in  misery  and  privation  in  every  brutish 
face.  Gorki  in  literature  strikes  the  same  note, 
with  others  quite  too  numerous  to  mention  in 
both  kinds.  It  is  brush  and  pen  in  the  service  of 
social  upheaval,  as  once  they  were  in  the  service 
of  religion. 

He  came  of  good  family  and  was  educated  for 
the  navy,  but  he  slipped  out  of  that  to  get  his 
training  in  art  at  Munich  and  in  the  Paris  schools. 
He  became  the  most  mercilessly  truthful  painter 


160  MY  HARVEST 

of  war  I  think  the  world  has  ever  seen.  How  he 
laughed  at  Horace  Vernet,  and  his  whole  set. 
"  Do  you  call  that  war — these  spick-and-span 
generals  prancing  on  circus  hacks,  these  clouds 
of  smoke  to  hide  the  horrors,  these  '  moments  of 
victory  '  focussed  for  stage  effect  ?  5:  His  pet 
aversion  in  this  line  was  Vernet's  standardized 
study  of  Napoleon  crossing  the  Alps.  Even  the 
august  Meissonier  was  not  spared  for  the  unreality 
of  his  snow,  in  the  "  1812  "  : — "  I  wonder  if  he 
has  ever  seen  such  a  thing."  He  was  of  Byron's 
mind  : — "  war's  a  brain  -  spattering,  windpipe- 
slitting  art."  He  photographed  nature  with  an 
eye  that  was  truer  than  the  lens,  and  he  never 
asked  her  to  look  pleasant.  He  was  in  Central 
Asia  for  the  campaign  of  the  Khanates,  and  had 
the  glories  of  the  mosques  of  Samarkand  for  his 
backgrounds,  and  for  the  main  business  a  welter 
of  blood.  No  other  man  of  his  time  had  such  a 
sure  touch  for  character  in  race  types — Tartars 
in  their  mansions  of  felt,  far  exceeding  the  scale 
of  the  tent,  Afghans,  manifestly  but  Jews  of  the 
lost  tribes,  cornered  at  last,  begging  dervishes, 
all  rags  fat  and  filth,  Kirghiz  swells  with  hawk 
and  hound. 

He  did  British  India  in  just  the  same  way,  from 
the  caves  of  Ellora  to  the  temples,  with  their 
priests,  deities,  monsters  thrown  in.  Then,  going 
out  of  his  beat  of  things  seen,  he  imagined  the 
Mutiny  with  the  sun  streaming  down  on  rebels 
tied  to  their  guns,  and  ready  to  go  up  as  manhood, 
and  come  down  as  rain.  His  appetite  for  horrors 
was  positively  insatiable,  and  he  found  a  fresh 


A  RUSSIAN  REALIST  161 

crop  in  the  Russo-Turkish  war.  Here,  as  often 
before,  he  took  a  share  in  the  fighting,  for 
patriotism,  as  he  put  it  to  himself,  but  I  fancy  only 
as  a  sop  to  the  old  Adam  that  was  deep  down  in 
his  nature.  He  went  out  with  a  torpedo  boat  and 
tried  to  sky  a  Turkish  ship  in  the  Danube,  missed 
it,  and  was  nearly  killed  for  his  pains  by  the  fire 
from  the  decks.  He  liked  fighting  for  its  own  sake  : 
the  purpose  in  painting  it  was  still  but  the  after- 
thought. It  fascinated  him  as  crime  fascinated 
Dostoieffsky.  Certainly  you  came  away  from  his 
work  with  a  disgust  for  slaughter,  and  certainly  he 
always  told  the  truth  about  it  free  from  patriotic 
bias. 

His  All  Quiet  at  Shipka  was  the  story  of  that 
dreadful  winter  in  the  Pass — scene  1,  the  Russian 
sentry  trotting  up  and  down  to  keep  himself  alive  ; 
scene  2,  the  same,  numbed  and  yielding  to  the 
sleep  hunger  ;  scene  3,  a  snow  -  covered  mound 
where  there  was  once  a  man,  with  the  stock  phrase 
of  the  despatches  for  his  epitaph.  He  saw  the 
great  assault  on  Plevna  when  a  hundred  thousand 
men  were  hurled  at  the  Turkish  entrenchments,  in  a 
fatuous  attempt  to  offer  the  fortress  as  a  birthday 
gift  to  the  Tsar.  This  and  its  sequel,  lines  and 
lines  of  the  Russian  dead  lying  in  their  shallow 
graves  to  await  the  blessing  of  the  priests,  or, 
worse  still,  a  vast  acreage  of  the  living  writhing  in 
every  contortion  of  agony  under  a  broiling  sun. 
The  birthday  scene  bore  an  ironical  significance 
that  was  the  most  appalling  of  all.  The  assault  is 
at  its  hottest  in  the  valley ;  and  on  a  hill  top, 
quite  out  of  harm's  way,  sits  the  Tsar  and  Little 


162  MY  HARVEST 

Father  of  his  people,  in  his  arm-chair,  watching  it 
through  an  opera-glass,  with  a  knot  of  persons  in 
attendance  to  give  him  the  points.  This  got  the 
painter  into  trouble  when  the  pictures  went  into 
the  exhibition  gallery.  The  court  party  were 
shocked.  "  Why  didn't  you  paint  His  Majesty 
at  the  head  of  his  brave  army  ?  "  "  Because  I 
never  saw  him  there.  But  it's  easy  to  destroy  the 
evidence  "  ;  and  in  a  fit  of  rage  he  seized  a  knife 
and  slashed  the  canvas  to  ribbons  before  their 
eyes. 

Everything  about  him  was  grandiose.  He  was 
one  of  the  handsomest  fellows  I  ever  met,  with  his 
fine  figure,  his  great  flowing  beard,  and  eyes  of 
fire.  But  the  Tartar  was  always  there  under  the 
veneer  of  civilization,  only  waiting  for  the  scratch. 
He  was  the  educated  savage,  the  most  formidable 
of  all  combinations  in  our  epoch  of  semi-civilized 
man.  Like  the  savage,  his  decisions  in  the  most 
momentous  affairs  came  with  the  speed  of  light. 
He  would  set  off  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  with 
hardly  a  handbag  for  his  kit,  and  make  for  the 
first  train  or  the  first  boat  that  would  put  him 
on  his  way.  Why  trouble  about  packing :  it 
was  so  easy  to  get  what  you  wanted  as  the  want 
came. 

At  Maisons-Laffitte  he  had  the  largest  studio 
in  the  world,  for  what  that  was  worth — the  floor 
space  a  hundred  feet  or  so  by  fifty,  the  doorway 
like  an  opening  in  a  barn,  a  window  to  match, 
and  with  that  the  whole  thing  fixed  on  a  huge  turn- 
table to  enable  it  to  follow  the  course  of  the  sun. 
It  was  rather  suggestive  of  scene-painting  if  you 


A  RUSSIAN  REALIST  163 

like,  so  was  the  work,  but  it  was  quite  good  of  its 
kind  in  its  rendering  of  the  verisimilitude  of  life 
and  character,  and  he  had  no  concern  about 
anything  else.  He  was  sometimes  served  here 
by  a  Russian  peasant  who  did  his  odd  jobs  in  the 
carpentering  line,  and  who,  as  a  national  peculiarity, 
wore  his  shirt  outside,  all  the  way  down.  The 
first  apparition  of  this  figure  at  the  railway  station, 
as  a  consignment  from  the  Steppe,  was  dismay 
for  the  local  authority.  The  gendarme  on  duty 
took  him  into  friendly  custody,  and  we  had  to 
set  forth  together  to  get  him  out  of  bond.  He  shook 
himself  when  he  got  in,  and  at  once  went  to  bed 
on  the  bare  boards  in  a  cupboard  under  the  stairs. 
The  relations  between  the  pair  were  still  the  old 
protective  ones  of  master  and  serf,  though  there 
was  much  attachment  on  both  sides.  Jacob — such 
was  his  name — was  regularly  taken  to  the  vapour 
bath  once  a  week,  and  otherwise  seen  to  as  a 
good  traveller  sees  to  his  horse.  He  had  come  from 
his  village  and  he  was  sent  back  to  it  with  all  care, 
when  his  spell  of  service  was  over.  Part  of  his 
wages  went  in  remittances  to  his  wife,  and  it  was 
understood  that,  if  she  failed  in  any  point  of  duty 
during  his  absence,  she  might  get  a  beating  on  his 
return.  The  arrangement  suited  both  sides,  as 
covering  all  misdemeanours  whatsoever,  and  leaving 
all  clear  for  a  fresh  start. 

Western  civilization  always  irked  the  master, 
though  he  had  seen  as  much  of  it  as  anyone  to  the 
manner  born.  If  he  had  known  enough  English, 
and  he  knew  a  good  deal,  he  would  have  called 
it  namby-pamby.  When  he  exhibited  at  the 


164  MY  HARVEST 

Grosvenor  with  the  gallery  all  to  himself,  he  found 
the  directors  with  their  methodical  ways  and 
their  regard  for  the  conventions,  very  much  of  a 
trial.  It  was  the  Asian  collection,  and  by  way  of 
commending  it  to  the  British  public,  he  rigged  up 
a  weird  figure,  as  from  Bokhara,  and  stuffed  it 
with  a  sandwich  man  to  perambulate  Bond  Street 
by  way  of  bringing  custom  to  the  show.  The 
directors  objected,  and  I  believe  he  told  them  to 
go  somewhere,  or  to  be  sent  there  post-haste, 
with  the  aid  of  a  pistol  which  he  always  carried 
in  his  pocket  as  a  survival  of  his  life  in  the 
wild. 

Once,  in  Paris,  he  nearly  used  the  weapon  in 
a  very  distressful  scene.  He  held  an  exhibition 
at  the  offices  of  the  Gaulois,  a  paper  at  that  time 
edited  by  one  of  his  countrymen,  an  ex-professor 
of  a  Russian  university.  Verestchagin  hated  the 
man,  because  he  had  brought  some  of  the  revolu- 
tionary students  to  grief  by  denouncing  them  to 
the  authorities.  This  rankled  in  his  mind,  and 
still  he  had  to  keep  on  terms,  since,  for  the  moment, 
their  business  relations  were  both  under  the  same 
roof.  One  day  we  strolled  in  from  the  Boulevard 
and  my  friend  went  up  to  the  editor  to  see  how 
things  were  going  on,  while  I  awaited  his  return 
in  the  antechamber.  Presently  I  heard  angry 
voices  from  the  sanctum,  and  I  rushed  in  with  the 
attendant  to  find  them  facing  one  another  on 
opposite  sides  of  the  table,  each  with  a  pistol 
at  the  other's  head,  and  exchanging  a  preliminary 
fire  of  abuse  in  the  choicest  Russian.  I  never 


A  RUSSIAN  REALIST  165 

stopped  to  ask  Verestchagin  what  it  was  about 
till  I  had  him  safe  in  the  street.  "  The  wretch,"  he 
said.  "  I  told  him  what  I  thought  of  him,  and  for 
two  pins"  (free  translation  from  the  French)  "I'd 
have  shot  him  like  a  dog." 

With  all  these  traits  he  was  quite  wheedling 
with  the  critics  when  they  came  for  the  notices, 
and  even  went  the  length  of  offering  the  general 
public  free  teas  with  no  stint  of  caviar.  The  last 
was  not  a  bribe  :  it  was  only  his  sense  of  the 
proprieties  on  the  part  of  an  artist  with  callers 
under  his  roof. 

At  about  this  time,  I  took  a  holiday  trip  to 
Vienna  for  my  first  view  of  the  German  at  home. 
The  familiar  characterization  of  these  southerners 
as  the  French  of  Germany  is  fairly  exact.  The 
South  German  is  pleasure-loving,  easy,  affable,  by 
the  mere  fact  of  his  greater  intimacy  with  the 
sun.  His  contact  with  so  many  alien  races  of  the 
same  cast  has  also  kept  him  up  to  the  mark  of  the 
social  amenities.  Hungary,  and  his  slice  of  southern 
Poland  have  been  of  priceless  value  to  him.  Every 
Hungarian  is  a  bit  of  a  Don  Quixote  ;  most  of  the 
Poles  foolishly  put  their  poetry  into  their  lives, 
instead  of  into  their  books.  The  Slav  element, 
and  the  Latin,  have  been  precious  influences  for 
the  German  of  the  south.  His  ideal  is  the  joy- 
ride  through  life,  tempered  only  by  respect  for 
the  police.  One  makes  his  acquaintance  without 
effort.  My  memory  of  him  and  of  his  womankind 
is  dotted  with  the  delights  of  little  suppers,  where 
you  might  say  anything  that  came  into  your  head,  if 


166  MY  HARVEST 

you  only  knew  how  to  say  it,  of  little  musical 
soirees  where  you  still  heard  melody  of  the  good 
old-fashioned  sort,  of  genial  professors  who  never 
talked  the  shop  of  culture  out  of  business  hours, 
of  visits  to  the  studios — to  Makart's,  especially, 
as  the  leading  man  of  the  day. 

Makart  was  rather  stand-offish,  no  doubt,  but  that 
was  only  because  he  had  to  live  up  to  his  reputation 
as  a  master ;  and  it  soon  wore  off.  Like  Verest- 
chagin,  he  painted  on  the  colossal  scale  :  his 
Entry  of  Charles  V  into  Antwerp  was  as  exacting 
in  the  matter  of  house-room  as  a  masterpiece  of 
Veronese.  It  was  all  love  and  war,  the  first 
especially  in  its  most  voluptuous  effects — the 
hero  with  a  sort  of  bodyguard  of  nymphs  who 
had  given  themselves  scant  time  to  dress,  in 
their  haste  to  show  the  way  to  the  primrose  path. 
It  took  even  Paris  by  storm,  at  one  of  the  great 
international  exhibitions — not  without  some  mis- 
givings in  regard  to  its  real  value  as  art.  He  carried 
the  craze  for  splendour  into  his  private  life.  His 
vast  studio  was  rather  a  showroom  than  a  work- 
shop, a  glory  of  choice  cabinets,  carpets,  trophies 
of  arms. 

His  followers  found  it  easier  to  affect  his  taste 
for  glaring  lights  and  bituminous  shadows  than 
to  catch  the  trick  of  his  genius.  One  of  them, 
whose  acquaintance  I  made,  was  keen  on  trying 
his  own  luck  with  the  method  at  the  French  Salon. 
I  duly  promised  to  do  what  I  could  for  him,  and, 
when  he  arrived,  offered  to  make  him  acquainted 
with  Sargent  as  a  coming  man.  He  hummed  and 
hawed,  and  said  he  only  wanted  to  know  first-rates. 


A  RUSSIAN  REALIST  167 

Paris  soon  knew  him  no  more,  and  I  was  avenged 
on  a  silly  fellow  while  Sargent  was  saved  from  a 
bore. 

Among  memorable  incidents  of  this  Vienna 
visit  was  the  sight  of  the  Crown  Prince  Rudolph 
and  his  wife,  the  Princess  Stephanie  of  Belgium, 
at  the  opera  house.  It  was  Owen  Meredith's 
"  she  looked  like  a  queen  in  her  box  that  night " 
in  actual  realization.  They  scarcely  spoke,  and 
both  seemed  to  long  for  more  congenial  society. 
I  hope  I  remarked  as  much  at  the  time,  and  that 
for  this  impression  I  owe  nothing  to  my  after 
knowledge  of  one  of  the  most  mysterious  tragedies 
of  history. 

Some  time  after  I  was  able  to  make  a  much 
longer  stay  in  Berlin.  There  was  work  to  do,  and 
with  it  the  attraction  of  another  one-man  show  by 
Verestchagin.  He  rarely,  if  ever  to  my  knowledge, 
sent  his  pictures  to  the  ordinary  galleries.  He 
took  subject  by  subject — Central  Asia,  India, 
the  Russo-Turkish  war — and  worked  on  it  till  he 
had  exhausted  it  and  himself.  Then  each  collection 
went  the  round  of  the  capitals  of  Europe,  with 
the  hope  of  the  great  cities  of  America  to  follow, 
and  sometimes  the  realization.  This  enabled  him 
to  show  his  work  to  the  best  advantage,  free  from 
all  interference  by  hanging  committees,  while  it 
ministered  to  his  love  of  distinction.  There  was 
the  series,  one  and  indivisible,  and,  to  keep  it 
intact,  he  often  refused  the  most  tempting  offers 
for  single  works.  His  aim,  sometimes  successful, 
was  to  have  it  bought  in  bulk  by  public  subscrip- 
tion, and  housed  in  a  state  gallery  to  glorify  his 


168  MY  HARVEST 

name  for  ever.  The  system  had  the  fatal  dis- 
advantage of  compelling  him  to  be  his  own 
business  man.  He  took  incredible  pains  to  effect 
the  miracle  of  the  dual  personality.  The  works 
were  packed  under  his  eye,  and  sent  off  in 
waggon  loads  suggestive  of  the  transport  of  an 
army  corps.  All  this,  for  the  time  being,  made 
him  quite  a  different  kind  of  man  from  the 
creature  of  impulse  I  have  already  described.  He 
brooded  over  his  treasures,  he  intrigued  for 
them  at  Custom  House  doors,  he  darted  half-way 
across  Europe  to  receive  them  at  their  journey's 
end.  Yet  again,  with  this  strain  to  aggravate  his 
natural  irritability,  we  may  imagine  the  occasional 
explosions. 

In  Berlin  it  was  a  peculiar  trial  because  he  had 
determined  to  surpass  himself  there.  It  was  to 
be  all  the  collections  in  one,  in  so  far  as  they  were 
at  his  disposal,  a  review  of  the  labours  of  a  lifetime. 
He  took  a  whole  theatre — KrolFs ;  shut  out  all 
the  daylight,  and  had  the  place  lit  by  electricity 
— needless  to  say  at  what  expense.  He  hung  it 
with  velvet  from  gallery  to  pit  to  hide  the  box 
openings,  and  give  it  the  effect  of  one  large  hall, 
and  closed  the  gap  of  the  stage  with  his  largest 
picture,  the  Prince  of  Wales  entering  Jeypore. 
You  stepped  from  the  raw  day  outside  into  a 
fairyland  of  light  with  its  paths  bordered  by  shrubs 
and  flowers.  With  all  this  there  was  music  from 
artfully  managed  recesses  where  a  choir  of  Russian 
singers,  imported  for  the  occasion,  wailed  national 
airs. 

Berlin  would  contentedly  have  paid  its  mark 


A  RUSSIAN  REALIST  169 

for  entry,  to  yield  him  a  fortune,  but  he  insisted 
on  lowering  the  price  to  a  sum  equal  to  about  three- 
pence of  our  money,  with,  I  believe,  a  reduction 
for  schools.  It  was  the  only  possible  way  of  courting 
financial  failure,  and  he  took  it  in  the  interest  of 
his  glory.  The  Berliners  talk  of  it  to  this  day. 
Everybody  came — that  was  enough  for  him.  All 
the  Court,  with  the  Crown  Prince  Frederick,  and 
the  Princess  nee  Princess  Royal  of  England.  The 
old  Kaiser,  as  the  exception  that  proved  the  rule, 
stood  out,  because  he  thought  that  such  a  profusion 
of  the  naked  truth  about  war  might  damp  the 
ardour  of  his  troops.  All  the  Generals,  Moltke 
among  them,  sleek  and  silent  as  one  of  his  own 
guns  in  time  of  peace,  giant  officers  of  the  guard 
with  impossible  shoulders,  tailor  made,  legs  equally 
so,  the  trouser  fitting  like  a  skin,  with  clinking 
spur  and  clanking  sabre,  in  which  they  no  doubt 
went  to  bed.  In  their  wake  came  the  professorial 
classes,  the  leaders  of  society,  and  finally  the 
million  almost  in  full  count. 

The  painter's  brother,  a  captain  of  Cossacks, 
watched  over  it  with  ten  times  the  zeal  of  a  hired 
attendant  to  parry  the  elbow  or  finger-thrusts  of 
the  crowd,  when  they  threatened  to  damage  the 
wares.  Here  and  there  some  canvas  showed  a 
graze  in  spite  of  him,  and  he  had  to  take  a  wigging 
from  his  chief,  with  bowed  head. 

"  Alexandre,  Alexandre,  they've  scratched  my 
Dervish  at  Prayer — what  have  you  been  about  ?  " 

"  I've  done  my  best,  brother,  but  I  can't  be 
everywhere." 

"  Do  you  hear  him  ?  do  you  hear  him  ?  he  can't 


170  MY  HARVEST 

be  everywhere.     Oh  the  droll  fellow  (le  plaisant). 
Did  you  ever  see  the  like  !  " 

He  died  in  character  :  when  his  hour  came,  it 
found  him  on  the  Russian  flagship  at  Port  Arthur 
that  struck  a  floating  mine,  and  went  to  the 
bottom  with  nearly  every  soul  on  board. 

Ay  me  !  whilst  thee  the  shores  and  sounding  seas 
Wash  far  away, — where'er  thy  bones  are  hurled. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
PRUSSIANIZED  HISTORY 

MY  stay  in  Germany  belonged  to  the  period  of 
a  new  Fatherland  in  the  world  of  ideas.  The 
intellectual  movement  was  to  organize  and  extend 
the  conquests  of  the  Germany  of  arms.  The 
nation  had  won  its  unity  on  the  battle-field ;  it 
had  yet  to  constitute  itself  in  other  directions.  This 
was  to  be  done  in  new  ways  of  living,  a  new 
outlook  all  round.  The  old  Fatherland  of  the  poets 
and  the  professors  had  done  its  work  in  preparation 
for  1870  :  a  generation  was  now  ready  for  the 
fullness  of  the  pride  of  life. 

The  'eighties,  therefore,  marked  an  epoch  quite 
as  important  in  its  way  as  that  of  the  great  war. 
The  German  was  now  to  realize  himself,  in  a  sort 
of  ecstasy  of  patriotic  brag,  as  the  heir  of  the  ages, 
and  as  the  chosen  one  of  the  scheme  of  Providence, 
for  the  shaping  of  the  spirit  of  man.  The  earlier 
influences  had  left  him  patient,  laborious,  sturdy, 
pious,  and  with  most  of  his  interests  centred  in 
the  home.  He  was  now  to  flower  into  the  ruler 
rather  than  the  mere  citizen  of  the  world.  He 
already  had  a  new  music — epos  and  all — the  time 
had  come  to  scrap  his  rich  endowment  in  the 
philosophies,  as  a  mere  second  best,  still  good 
enough  for  humanity  at  large,  and  to  start  another 

171 


172  MY  HARVEST 

exclusively  for  his  own  use.  This  was  to  make 
him  a  being  quite  apart  in  the  evolution  of  the  race, 
with  Prussia  for  its  hard  core. 

Berlin,  as  I  saw  it,  became  more  than  ever  the 
city  of  the  back  seat  for  the  foreigner  :  "  Pride  in 
their  port,  defiance  in  their  eye,  I  see  the  lords  of 
human  kind  pass  by  "  was  no  longer  a  poetical 
hyperbole.  The  military  heroes  reeked  of  self- 
sufficiency,  from  the  officer  of  the  guard  to  the 
humblest  captain  of  a  marching  regiment.  The 
very  politeness  seemed  machine-made.  People 
met  for  social  enjoyment  in  unions  organized  under 
the  most  rigid  rules ;  nothing  seemed  to  come 
with  the  charm  of  accident.  To  borrow  a  cant 
term  from  the  new  philosophy,  it  was  but  the  will 
to  good  breeding,  and  as  part  of  the  will  to  power. 
Their  sport  was  cultivated  for  the  muscle,  not  the 
muscle  for  the  sport.  This  method  of  approach 
seemed  to  extend  to  everything  but  the  table 
manners,  which  still,  from  the  pocket  comb  to 
the  management  of  the  knife  and  fork,  were  those 
of  the  old  dispensation.  There  was  nothing  of  the 
soft  play  of  life  in  it.  It  recalled  a  severe  criticism 
of  the  Sartor,  that  Carlyle  never  forgot.  "  Our 
author  reminds  us  of  the  German  baron,  who, 
when  asked  why  he  was  jumping  over  the  chairs 
and  tables,  said  he  was  trying  to  be  lively." 
Equestrians  in  the  park  put  their  steeds  to  the  pace 
like  circus  riders,  with  swelling  breast  and  haughty 
eye  that  seemed  to  solicit,  or  rather  demand,  a 
"  hand  "  from  the  crowd. 

It  was  part  of  my  duty  as  a  foreign  resident  to 
show  my  passport  at  the  police  office  of  my  district. 


PRUSSIANIZED  HISTORY  173 

One  day  when  I  was  doing  that,  a  poor  "  Bobby  "  of 
the  rank  and  file  came  in  to  give  an  account  of  his 
stewardship  ;  and  sheer  nervousness,  I  suppose, 
made  him  blunder  in  some  detail.  His  petty 
superior  positively  barked — there  is  no  other  word 
for  it — a  reprimand,  until  the  other  became  speech- 
less with  terror  and  confusion.  He,  of  course,  took 
his  revenge  on  the  private  citizen.  I  heard  after- 
wards of  an  arrest  for  some  small  offence  in  the 
public  street.  The  offender,  who  had  suddenly 
taken  to  his  heels,  was  pursued,  tripped  up,  and 
in  a  trice  found  himself  on  the  flat  of  his  back  with 
the  points  of  two  police  sabres  at  his  throat.  I 
was  calling  one  day  on  an  old  friend  in  a  public 
office,  when  his  chief  entered  the  room  to  discuss 
some  matter  connected  with  the  day's  work.  My 
friend,  who  was  quite  on  the  same  social  level, 
immediately  sprang  to  his  feet  for  the  salute, 
and  began  every  phrase  of  the  conversation  with  a 
"  ja,  Herr  Direktor,"  or  a  "  nein,  Herr  Direktor" 
which,  in  any  other  country,  would  have  been 
rather  out  of  place  as  between  an  office-boy  and  a 
Prime  Minister.  The  Kaiser  took  his  daily  drive 
in  Unter  den  Linden  with  the  same  curious  obser- 
vances. The  sentry  at  the  Brandenburger  Gate 
had  to  become  aware  of  him  in  the  distance,  and 
as  he  came  within  hail  to  raise  a  raucous  shout  that 
brought  out  the  whole  guard  to  seize  their  rifles, 
stacked  for  the  salute.  He  seemed  a  pathetic 
figure,  as  the  only  being  in  all  his  dominions 
without  a  superior  entitled  to  the  kotow. 

Nothing  seemed  to  come  "  natural  "  to  them, 
except  drill  for  every  spontaneous  movement  of 


174  MY  HARVEST 

the  soul.  In  literature  they  would  have  been 
capable  of  putting  poets  into  commission,  as  in 
war  they  have  already  put  Csesar  and  Napoleon — 
not  forgetting  Attila  and  Tamerlane. 

The  first  essay  in  modernity  originated  with 
the  cult  of  Zola,  by  a  band  of  precocious  lads  who, 
in  the  'sixties,  had  been  spoon-fed  on  his  writings, 
and  began  to  feel  the  longing  for  a  new  departure 
for  its  own  sake.  Of  course,  it  was  but  another 
"  Sturm  und  Drang,"  a  something  that  seemed  to 
derive  its  motive  force  from  a  steam-engine. 
German  literature  is  peculiarly  subject  to  these 
nervous  disorders.  The  classic  case  is  that  of  the 
Olympian  Goethe  and  his  Sorrows  of  Werther,  in 
which  he  deliberately  caught  the  complaint  as  the 
shortest  way  of  getting  it  over. 

"  Down  with  tradition,"  was  the  cry.  The 
topsy-turvy  was  to  be  absolute  and  not  only  in 
the  arts,  but  in  education,  psychology,  morals, 
politics,  in  the  latter  especially  as  the  leading  line 
of  the  new  firm.  All  instruction  that  was  not 
based  on  the  intensive  culture  of  the  will  was  to 
die  the  death.  The  first  leader  of  consequence  was 
Michael  Conrad,  a  Munich  painter  who  saw  litera- 
ture as  a  sort  of  voluntary  on  the  big  drum. 
German-like,  he  founded  a  regular  society  for  its 
propaganda,  with  a  secretariat  and  an  "  organ  " 
as  a  matter  of  course.  This  lively  little  thing 
manifested  against  "  emasculated  science,"  "  fried 
fish  criticism,"  "  flunkeyism,"  and  all  else  pertain- 
ing in  hard  words  ;  though  it  was  still  but  Carlyle's 
baron  going  methodically  to  work  in  the  art  of 
being  without  art.  Berlin,  naturally,  was  soon 


PRUSSIANIZED  HISTORY  175 

in  the  field,  and,  characteristically,  it  began  by 
doubling  the  local  leadership  with  the  brothers 
Henry  and  Julius  Hart.  At  first  they  fought 
Munich  for  supremacy,  but  soon  all  joined  hands. 
The  programme  was  naturally  destructive  at  the 
expense  of  the  old  gang.  Dahn,  Freytag,  Spiel- 
hagen,  and  others  were  immolated  on  the  altars 
of  the  faith,  as  mad  dilettanti,  guilty  in  some 
mysterious  way  of  furthering  "  the  work  of  hell," 
while  Turguenieff,  Dostoieffsky,  Tolstoy,  Bjornson, 
and  Ibsen — assuredly  to  the  surprise  of  many  of 
them — were  claimed  as  patrons  of  the  new  thought. 

The  movement  was  much  more  serious  in 
another  field,  history.  It  is  deeply  interesting  to 
see  how  an  outburst  of  creative  energy  in  research 
that  began  with  Niebuhr  and  universal  sympathy 
should  end  in  a  Prussian  school  with  a  doctrine  of 
universal  conquest.  Germany  has  long  been  the 
annalist  of  the  world,  but  while  she  once  wrote 
wholly  in  the  service  of  truth,  she  now  writes 
largely  in  the  service  of  self-love.  The  change  may 
be  traced  by  the  English  reader  in  Mr.  G.  P. 
Gooch's  recent  History  and  Historians  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  a  glory  of  British  scholarship 
and  learning  in  the  literature  of  its  kind.  A  History 
of  Histories,  it  might  more  aptly  be  called,  in  its 
fascinating  form  of  a  history  of  historians.  But 
the  reader  must  find  his  moral  for  himself,  for 
Mr.  Gooch  has  none  to  enforce. 

When  beaten  by  Napoleon,  the  Germans  natur- 
ally began  to  set  their  house  in  order  to  save  them 
from  extinction.  They  turned  to  history  to  learn 
what  they  had  done  in  the  past  for  national 


176  MY  HARVEST 

regeneration,  and  what  they  might  hope  to  do 
again.  We  know  how  well  they  took  the  lesson 
to  heart.  Their  success  was  so  dazzling  in  1870-71 
that  they  began  to  dream  of  universal  empire. 
They  had  conquered  France,  why  not  the  planet 
next  ?  It  was  intoxication,  but  the  historians  had 
their  share,  and  a  deep  one,  of  the  draught. 
History  gradually  became  the  handmaid  of  this 
ambition,  and  at  last  grew  to  be  the  degraded 
study  which  it  is  with  some  of  them  to-day.  This 
was  mainly  the  work  of  the  Prussian  or  Prussianiz- 
ing historians. 

The  mighty  Niebuhr  was  the  founder  of  the 
science  of  history  in  its  day  of  wisdom,  justice,  and 
power.  His  thesis  was  the  evolution  of  freedom 
in  human  institutions,  and  he  could  afford  to  do 
full  justice  to  all  nations,  and  especially  to  ours, 
for  their  share  of  the  work.  Roman  history  was 
more  especially  his  subject :  he  may  be  said  to 
have  dug  up  old  Rome  with  his  pen.  He  was  too 
much  of  the  period  of  national  humiliation  to  be 
without  his  feelings,  but  he  ever  strove  to  keep  them 
in  due  subordination  to  the  facts.  Nationalism  and 
the  dread  of  revolution  were  the  dominant  princi- 
ples of  his  political  philosophy. 

Eichhorn,  the  most  important  of  his  immediate 
successors,  went  beyond  this  in  his  resolve  to 
dedicate  himself  to  history  as  a  labour  of  construc- 
tive patriotism.  Then  came  the  Grimms,  especially 
Jacob,  with  their  glorious  anthologies  of  the  old 
German  literature  for  the  discovery  of  the  Folk 
soul.  If  this  was  bias,  it  was  only  the  natural  one 
for  Germany,  without  being  against  the  foreigner. 


PRUSSIANIZED  HISTORY  177 

"  Prussia  is  done  for,"  said  Napoleon,  "  she  has 
disappeared  from  the  map  of  Europe."  Even 
Goethe  despaired  :  "  shake  your  chains  as  you 
will,  he  is  too  strong  for  you."  Wilken,  a  pupil  of 
Eichhorn,  went  a  step  farther  in  his  History  of  the 
Crusades,  with  Germany  as  the  leading  power  in 
Europe.  A  history  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  his  view, 
should  begin  and  end  with  the  German  race. 

Ranke,  the  other  great  monumental  figure  after 
Niebuhr,  was  from  first  to  last  a  sobering  force. 
With  him  history  was  simply  a  great  object-lesson 
in  ethics  and  religion,  and  only  with  all  possible 
reverence  for  the  facts.  He  was  as  fair  to  the 
Popes  as  to  Luther  and  the  Reformation  :  balance 
was  the  only  passion  of  his  placid  soul.  He  was 
fair  to  Prussia — too  discriminatingly  so  to  please 
many,  Carlyle  among  them — for  now,  in  the 
middle  of  the  century,  the  taint  of  partisanship 
had  become  as  indelible  as  a  birth-mark.  He  simply 
refused  to  discuss  the  annexation  of  Silesia  as  a  legal 
act.  He  was  fair  to  England  for  the  order  and 
conservation  of  her  march  of  progress.  He  wel- 
comed the  war  of  1870,  but  mainly  as  a  triumph 
of  conservative  over  revolutionary  Europe,  and 
he  was  wholly  free  from  the  jingo  taint.  His  rivals 
grew  more  and  more  impatient  of  his  virtues  : 
one  dubbed  him  a  sort  of  historian  in  kid  gloves  ; 
another,  a  mere  aesthete,  whose  outlook  was  that 
of  an  artist  and  not  of  a  statesman.  For  all  that, 
as  Mr.  Gooch  shows,  he  was  "  the  first  to  divorce 
the  study  of  the  past  from  the  passions  of  the 
present,  and  to  relate  what  actually  occurred." 
And  this,  too,  on  the  authority  of  the  strictly 


178  MY  HARVEST 

contemporary  sources  of  the  period  in  hand.  He 
founded  the  science  of  historical  evidence  and  withal 
was  "  beyond  comparison  the  greatest  historical 
writer  of  modern  times." 

But  the  Germanizing  professors,  if  not  the  purely 
Prussian  variety,  were  now  maturing  for  their 
entry  into  politics  as  a  party  rather  than  a  school. 
With  them  history  was  but  a  setting  for  the  burning 
questions  of  the  hour,  and  the  idol  of  impartiality 
stood  in  their  way.  As  far  back  as  1826  Leo  had 
thought  proper  to  censure  what  he  was  pleased  to 
call  Ranke's  "  timid  avoidance  of  personal  views," 
by  which  he  meant  his  refusal  to  tilt  the  scale; 
and  to  talk  of  his  work  as  mere  porcelain  painting 
for  ladies  and  amateurs.  His  own  work  in  history 
was  certainly  not  open  to  that  reproach  :  he  seems 
never  to  have  fastened  on  a  theme  without  trying 
to  make  it  serve  the  purpose  of  propaganda. 
"  He  glories  in  Hildebrand  and  Canossa,  approves 
the  inquisition  and  the  Albigensian  crusade, 
condemns  Wycliffe  and  Hus,  denounces  Luther 
as  the  enemy  of  authority,  and  justifies  Alva's 
reign  of  blood."  This  gave  the  patriots  a  method, 
if  it  did  not  give  them  a  doctrine  worthy  of  the 
name,  and  they  were  soon  able  to  claim  the 
illustrious  Gervinus  as  a  leader.  The  active  life, 
he  declared,  was  the  middle  point  of  all  history. 
One  of  his  heroes  was  Machiavelli,  who  "  dared 
all  for  the  good  of  his  country."  In  this  instance, 
indeed,  it  was  only  action  for  the  promotion  of 
democratic,  as  distinct  from  merely  nationalistic 
ideas.  He  witnessed  the  unification  of  Germany 
without  enthusiasm,  and  denounced  Bismarck 


PRUSSIANIZED  HISTORY  179 

for  the  war  of  1864.  He  even  kept  his  cap  on  his 
head  when  every  other  was  in  the  air  for  Sedan. 
"  I  have  always  urged  a  federation,  not  a  Prussian 
hegemony  based  on  force."  He  "  hardly  belonged 
to  any  nation,"  said  Treitschke,  as  he  brushed 
him  aside. 

Waitz  discovered  that  the  early  German  tribes 
were  highly  civilized  ;  and  when  one  critic  hinted 
that  he  ought  therefore  to  have  put  them  more 
into  the  picture,  he  excused  himself  on  the  ground 
that  his  authorities  were  chiefly  "  foreigners  " — 
Tacitus,  no  doubt,  among  the  number.  Giese- 
brecht,  a  thorough  conservative  in  politics,  brings 
in  the  thin  end  of  the  wedge  of  the  Imperial  theme 
— a  powerful  empire,  a  vigorous  church,  a  God- 
fearing people.  He  rises  to  enthusiasm  over  the 
emperors  :  "  they  made  the  German  the  people  of 
peoples."  Exactly  what  is  thought  at  the  Berlin 
Schloss  to-day,  exactly  what  its  master  thought 
when  he  got  rid  of  Bismarck,  in  order  to  appro- 
priate all  the  glory  of  the  achievement  to  the 
dynasty.  Even  Sybel  will  hear  nothing  of  this  in 
regard  to  the  emperors — the  only  hope  of  salvation 
for  the  bewildered  reader  is  in  the  way  these 
authorities  contradict  each  other  on  the  facts.  He 
saw  that  all  this  reverence  for  the  old  empire  was 
but  a  new-fangled  thing,  even  if  he  did  not  fully 
suspect  what  purposes  it  was  to  be  made  to  serve. 
Giesebrecht,  he  thought,  would  have  done  better 
if  he  had  moderated  his  raptures,  and  struck  a 
profit  and  loss  account.  The  huge  centralized 
empire  of  Charlemagne  was  detrimental  to  the  races 
that  needed  free  play.  The  subsequent  failure  of 


180  MY  HARVEST 

Otto's  attempt  to  revive  it  was  a  blessing  for 
German  nationality.  Still,  he  added,  as  though  by 
way  of  putting  himself  in  order,  Prussia  was  the  true 
leader.  At  the  same  time,  a  scandalized  Slavonic 
scholar  rapped  out  a  warning  note  against  the 
limitless  idealization  of  the  German  race.  It 
passed  all  bounds ;  the  German  historian  had 
two  moral  standards  :  one  for  Germans,  another 
for  the  rest  of  mankind.  While  the  Germans  were 
extolled  as  the  embodiment  of  every  virtue,  their 
age  was  bloody  and  dark. 

The  Prussian  school  began  with  Dahlmann, 
who  had  begun  to  write  before  1848.  But  all  he 
wanted  was  a  Liberal  empire  under  Prussian 
leadership,  with  constitutionalism  for  its  corner- 
stone. Duncker,  who  followed,  naturally  wanted 
more  :  the  German  question  was  not  one  of 
freedom,  but  of  force.  He  supported  Bismarck  in 
his  conflict  with  the  Parliament  :  "  His  writings 
breathe  an  almost  mystical  devotion  to  the 
dynasty."  He  had  his  reward,  unsought  in  all 
probability,  in  his  appointment  as  a  kind  of  tutor 
to  the  Crown  Prince  Frederick,  and  Historiographer 
of  Brandenburg.  The  next  highest  bidder  was 
Droysen,  pointing  the  moral  for  action,  with  a 
genial  glorification  of  the  military  caste,  and  the 
militant  statesmen.  Prussia  must  not  content 
herself  any  longer  with  being  the  second  power  in 
Germany — Bismarck  is  delighted  with  that.  The 
old  gang  of  moderation  and  common-sense  protests 
against  a  book  of  this  writer  as  "  a  bad  novel,"  but 
he  goes  cheerily  on  to  a  verdict  in  favour  of  the 
Prussian  claim  to  Silesia,  in  spite,  as  we  have  seen, 


PRUSSIANIZED  HISTORY  181 

of  the  fact  that  Ranke  had  declined  to  discuss  it 
on  its  ethical  side.  Droysen  discovers  in  his  sources 
everything  that  he  wants  to  find,  even  when  it  is  not 
there.  And  finally  he  touches  the  bed-rock  of 
false  principles  on  which  all  his  followers  have  since 
built  with  the  declaration  that  the  state,  which  is 
the  all  in  all,  is  not  the  sum  of  the  individuals  whom 
it  comprehends,  nor  does  it  arise  from  their  will. 
The  present  Kaiser,  in  his  turn,  must  have  been 
delighted  with  this  :  he  once  sent  a  special 
messenger  to  Parliament  to  the  effect  that  he  had 
no  knowledge  of  the  people  as  the  source  or 
sanction  of  his  power. 

The  current  has  now  become  too  strong  for 
Sybel,  and  he  shows  his  effectual  repentance  in  a 
fierce  onslaught  on  the  French  Revolution  in 
every  single  energy  of  its  being — an  outburst  that 
led  Frederic  Harrison  to  characterize  him  as 
"  little  more  than  a  German  Alison."  In  a  moment 
of  unwonted  candour  he  owns  his  weakness  :  "I 
am  four-sevenths  politician  and  three-sevenths 
professor."  After  Sedan,  he  is  Bismarck's  man, 
body  and  soul,  and  is  ready  to  defend  the  awful 
crime  of  the  doctoring  of  the  text  of  the  Ems 
telegram  that  goaded  France  into  the  war.  It  was 
"  shortened  "  only,  not  altered.  He  met  with  his 
appropriate  reward.  He  had  retained  enough  of  his 
old  doubts,  as  to  the  supreme  part  played  by  the 
emperors  in  German  history,  to  venture  to  show 
that  Bismarck  counted  for  more  than  his  nominal 
master  in  the  overthrow  of  France.  This  angered 
the  new  master,  the  Kaiser  who  is  still  with  us. 
He  not  only  vetoed  the  grant  of  a  prize  to  Sybel 


182  MY  HARVEST 

for  one  of  his  works,  but  excluded  him  from  the 
archives  of  the  Foreign  Office — a  touch  of  petty 
spite  that  may  help  us  to  take  his  measure. 

The  greatest  and  last  of  the  band  was  Treitschke. 
"  The  most  eloquent  of  preachers,  the  most  fervid 
of  apostles,  the  most  passionate  of  partisans,"  says 
Mr.  Gooch,  "  he  most  completely  embodies  the 
blending  of  history  and  politics  which  it  was  the 
aim  of  the  School  to  achieve."  He  simplifies  the 
issue  at  the  start,  by  adopting  as  his  life  motto  : 
"  In  the  dust  with  all  the  enemies  of  the  Branden- 
burg." Germany  is  to  be  not  only  one  empire,  but 
one  state.  The  smaller  fry  are  not  to  be  federated 
into  union,  but  annexed.  Prussia  is  to  attack 
them  straight  away,  apparently  without  waiting 
for  the  formalities  of  a  quarrel.  Hanover,  Hesse, 
Saxony  "  ripe  and  over-ripe  for  annihilation.  My 
father  will  grieve  over  it — he  was  himself  a  Saxon 

— but "      He,  too,  stood  the  test  of  the  Ems 

telegram,  which  is  a  sort  of  touchstone  for  the  best 
or,  rather,  the  worst  of  them,  without  a  pang. 
Even  Sybel,  as  we  have  seen,  could  find  nothing 
better  to  say  in  defence  of  it  than  that  nothing 
had  been  added,  only  something  left  out.  The 
other  disdains  all  finessing  of  that  sort.  "  What  a 
humiliation  we  have  escaped  !  Had  not  Bismarck 
so  cleverly  edited  the  telegram  the  King  would  have 
given  way  again."  The  history  of  Germany,  in 
which  he  reveals  himself  in  these  interesting  lights, 
comes  into  universal  acceptance,  and  not  as  a  mere 
history  with  others,  not  even  as  the  history,  but 
as  German  History — for  good  and  all.  His  brother 
professors  bleat  protest  here  and  there,  but  he 


PRUSSIANIZED  HISTORY  183 

can  afford  to  pay  no  heed  to  them  :  Germany  has 
found  what  it  wanted,  its  god  of  Grab.  The  old 
superseded  deity  of  judgment  and  mercy  was 
still  able  to  discharge  a  Parthian  shot  before 
retiring  from  the  scene.  "  God  cannot  take  me 
away  till  I  have  written  my  sixth  volume,"  cried 
Treitschke  ;  yet  he  died  while  it  was  still  to  write. 

He  had  all  the  gifts  indispensable  to  a  task  which 
was  to  be  brutal,  reactionary,  and  a  standing  out- 
rage on  the  human  conscience  from  first  to  last, 
the  magic  of  style,  a  power  of  loving  and  hating 
with  almost  volcanic  force,  a  pen  that  was  also  a 
sword.  All  the  catchwords  of  national  and  racial 
hatred  were  at  his  finger  ends.  He  honours 
England  with  the  bitterest  detestation,  "  the  Bible 
in  one  hand,  an  opium  pipe  in  the  other  " — pipe  and 
Bible  as  a  matter  of  course.  The  Jews  catch  it  in 
just  the  same  way,  and  the  anti-Semitism  of 
Stocker  comes  into  its  own.  The  hope  of  banishing 
war  is  not  only  meaningless,  but  immoral.  The 
duel  is  a  discipline  for  it  :  "If  the  strong  van- 
quishes the  weak,  it  is  the  law  of  life."  It  is 
history  treated  by  a  prophet  scold  of  the  first  class, 
to  meet  the  wants  of  the  all-conquering  race — 
history  drawn  and  twisted  into  the  required 
shapes  like  a  piece  of  Austrian  bentwood.  It 
degrades  colonization  to  the  level  of  a  mere  paro- 
chial extension  of  the  German  norm  in  every 
institution  and  in  every  detail  of  corporate  life, 
the  very  thing  it  is  not  and  never  can  be  in  our 
day. 

The  end  and  the  be-all  of  the  state,  we  are  told, 
is  power ;  he  who  is  not  man  enough  to  look  this 


184  MY  HARVEST 

truth  in  the  face  should  not  meddle  with  politics. 
A  sacrifice  made  to  an  alien  nation  is  not  only 
immoral :  it  contradicts  the  idea  of  self-preserva- 
tion which  is  the  highest  ideal  of  a  state.  God 
will  see  to  it  that  war  shall  constantly  recur  as  a 
drastic  medicine  for  the  human  race.  In  one  of  his 
functions  Treitschke  is  a  sort  of  understudy  of  the 
furies  of  the  old  horde,  shrieking  on  the  new  one 
to  rapine  and  blood. 

But  one  more  prophet  of  wrath  was  wanted,  and 
he  came — Nietzsche.  He  is  a  thrice-told  tale  by 
this  time,  yet  he  has  been  strangely  misconceived. 
His  true  significance,  I  suspect,  is  the  one  thing  we 
have  all  missed.  Historically,  he  continues  the 
line  of  the  great  satirists  of  the  world,  as  the 
Rabelais  or  the  Swift  of  his  time.  To  construe  him 
literally  is  to  degrade  the  estimate  of  his  remarkable 
powers.  He  was  a  man-hater  at  war  with  his  age, 
a  super-sensitive,  with  a  skin  disease  of  vanity 
finally  burrowing  down  to  the  roots  of  his  being — 
a  Timon  of  Athens,  if  you  like,  with  Wagner  for 
one  of  his  ingrates.  His  philosophy  is  but  his  ven- 
geance on  the  whole  pack,  in  the  form  of  fable. 
To  take  his  Superman  with  a  grave  face  as  the 
forecast  of  the  course  of  human  development  is  to 
be  in  the  same  plight  as  the  two  right  reverend 
prelates  who  discussed  the  import  of  Gulliver. 
There  were  some  things  in  it,  said  one,  that  almost 
passed  belief,  while  the  other  made  bold  to  declare 
that,  for  his  part,  he  didn't  believe  a  word  of  it. 
Nietzsche's  concept  of  the  Son  of  Man  as  a  patriot 
trickster  in  the  service  of  the  Rabbis  was  assuredly 
not  his  belief,  but  one  that  in  his  wrath  he  would 


PRUSSIANIZED  HISTORY  185 

fain  attribute  to  the  bulk  of  his  fellow-creatures. 
His  girding  at  morals  was  but  compassion  for 
its  low  estate,  rendered,  of  course,  in  the  terms  of 
irony.  His  dog- whip,  as  the  only  instrument  for  the 
government  of  women,  was,  equally  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  no  personal  conviction  of  one  who  owed 
everything  to  the  love  and  care  of  the  most  devoted 
of  womankind.  His  true  mark  was  that  scorn  of 
the  suffering  mass,  that  deification  of  the  merciless 
masters,  which  he  found  in  the  society  of  all  time. 
He  saw  that  the  ages  have  known  no  other  dominant 
type,  and  that  humanity,  as  it  stands  to-day  under 
the  burden  of  its  sorrows,  is  the  tragic  result. 

The  letter  killeth  :  to  take  all  this  at  its  face  value 
is  but  Sporus  breaking  his  butterfly  on  the  wheel. 
He  saw  that  modern  society  was  perishing  of  the 
megalomania  of  individualism,  and  he  produced 
his  monster  of  the  Superman,  as  Rabelais  produced 
some  of  his  giants. 

But  this  is  exactly  what  Germany  has  done  at 
the  bidding  of  the  fatuous  Brandes,  eager  to  make 
good  his  claim  to  the  discovery  of  a  new  light  in 
literature.  He  has  no  criterion  of  judgment  but 
the  "  powerful  personality."  He  might  have  known 
that  Superman  is  but  the  exaggeration,  in  carica- 
ture, of  a  favourite  fancy  of  the  professor  at 
whose  feet  Nietzsche  sat  as  a  youth  in  the  lecture 
room.  Biirckhardt  revelled  in  his  conception  of 
the  "  universal  man "  of  the  Renascence,  the 
Tyrant  and  the  Condottiere,  who,  "  despite  their 
ruthlessness,  were  men  cast  in  a  gigantic  mould." 
It  was  the  pupil's  protest,  not  his  confession  of 
faith. 


186  MY  HARVEST 

Bernhardi,  with  equal  ingenuity  in  missing  the 
point,  is  to  Treitschke  what  Brandes  is  to  Nietzsche. 
He  hardly  counts  in  any  serious  consideration  of 
the  case.  He  has  degraded  the  Prussian  historians 
to  the  level  of  mere  quotations  for  his  "  trade 
circulars  "  of  war,  and  is  at  best  but  a  parasite 
of  the  regular  growths.  To  be  preached  to  death 
by  a  dull  curate,  as  well  as  a  wild  one,  is  to  suffer 
the  superfluous  pang.  He  stands  for  nothing  but 
a  pedantic  scheme  for  the  subjugation  of  the 
whole  earth,  until  but  one  barbaric  cry,  and  that  a 
Hoch  !  shall  be  heard  over  the  roofs  of  the  world. 
He  is  about  the  only  one  of  them  known  in  this 
country.  Yet,  with  all  his  imperfections  on  his 
head,  he  ought  to  be  "  appointed  to  be  read  in 
churches,"  not  as  an  Apocalyptic  warning  of  our 
national  fate,  but  only  to  bring  comfort  to  the 
citizen  in  his  pew.  England,  of  course,  looms 
largely  in  his  plan  of  campaign.  She  has  long 
since  found  that  those  who  set  themselves  to 
break  Parliaments  are  apt  to  find  Parliaments 
able  to  break  them.  Even  the  Prussian  historians 
might  have  told  him  that  those  who  undertake 
the  larger  task  of  breaking  England  run  some  risk 
of  the  same  fate. 

To  form  an  idea  of  the  extent  to  which  all  this 
has  cast  its  spell  over  the  German  mind,  we  have 
only  to  turn  to  a  curious  manifesto  from  the 
German  theologians,  issued  in  the  earlier  stages 
of  the  war.  It  was  addressed  to  "  Evangelical 
Christians  Abroad,"  and  was,  as  the  phrase  goes, 
most  influentially  signed  by  professors,  pastors, 
missionaries,  evidently,  by  their  official  titles,  of 


PRUSSIANIZED  HISTORY  187 

the  highest  standing  in  Berlin,  Munich,  Halle, 
Hamburg,  Gottingen,  Frankfort,  Leipsig,  and 
elsewhere.  That  nothing  might  be  wanting  to  give 
it  its  peculiar  character,  it  came  at  a  time  when 
no  small  part  of  Belgium  was  but  a  landscape  of 
burned  villages,  and  thousands  of  wretched  crea- 
tures, who  had  lost  their  all,  were  tramping  the 
blood-stained  roads  on  their  way  beyond  sea  for  a 
roof  and  a  crust.  In  face  of  all  this,  the  manifesto 
invited  the  sympathies  of  the  Evangelical  churches 
of  Christendom  for  a  German  people,  whose  ideal 
was  peaceful  work,  who  desired  to  thrust  none  from 
its  place,  who  claimed  only  "  a  modest  share  of 
colonization  in  the  primitive  world,"  and  who 
had  only  drawn  the  sword  "  to  repel  a  wanton 
attack,"  and  in  defence  of  its  individuality,  its 
culture,  and  its  honour. 

The  document  concluded  with  passages  from 
The  Lord's  Prayer. 

This  far  transcends  hypocrisy,  it  comes  out 
of  the  very  night  of  the  human  mind,  the  atrophy 
of  the  human  soul,  and  it  will  remain  for  many  a 
day  the  most  terrible  weapon  in  the  armoury  of 
the  adversary.  From  first  to  last,  the  cause  of 
Germany  is  implicitly  identified  with  civilization, 
and  the  latter  with  "  Teutonic  Protestantism." 
No  wonder  that  Civilization :  Its  Cause  and  Cure 
is  one  of  the  most  widely  read  of  Edward  Carpen- 
ter's works. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY 

MY  life  was  still  Paris  as  a  place  of  settlement 
tempered  by  foreign  missions.  One  of  these 
took  me  to  Russia,  still  the  real  Asian  mystery. 
Scribner's  Magazine,  subsequently  purchased  by  The 
Century  Company,  had  made  a  new  departure  in 
serial  publication,  with  a  life  of  Peter  the  Great  by 
Eugene  Schuyler,  United  States  Consul  at  Rome. 
There  was  need  of  material  for  illustration :  I  was 
sent  out  to  collect  it,  for  the  benefit  of  the  Russian 
and  French  artists  in  Paris  who,  under  my  direc- 
tion, were  to  illustrate  the  work. 

The  conductors  of  the  magazine — Mr.  Roswell 
Smith  as  representing  the  company,  and  Dr. 
Holland  as  Editor,  with  Richard  Watson  Gilder 
as  the  next  in  command — had  determined  to  make 
art  in  illustration  one  of  the  chief  features.  They 
took  incredible  pains  about  it,  and  were  as  lavish 
of  money  as  other  commanders  are  of  lives.  The 
old  wood  engraving  was  to  give  place  to  the  new 
method  of  the  process  which  preserves  all  the 
main  features  of  the  original  drawing.  All  en- 
graving is  at  best  only  a  translation,  and  too 
often  but  a  paraphrase  :  the  other  is  verisimilitude, 
in  all  that  makes  for  "  quality  "  —the  strokes  of 
the  brushwork,  the  happy  accidents  of  the  fever 

188 


THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY         189 

of  execution.  A  graver  trying  to  be  careless  is 
sometimes  but  an  elephant  dancing  a  hornpipe. 
It  was  now  to  be  the  picture  almost  as  it  had  come 
from  the  artist's  hand.  They  imported  largely 
from  Germany,  both  for  methods  and  for  men. 
They  had  many  ups  and  downs  in  the  course  of 
the  heroic  venture,  but  they  won  at  last  and 
revolutionized  the  higher  art  of  illustration  in 
our  part  of  the  world. 

I  took  out  the  proper  introductions,  and  I  needed 
them.  All  official  Russia  was  in  the  cold  fit  of 
suspicion  and  mistrust,  the  period  being  that  of 
the  assassination  of  the  Tsar  Liberator  Alexander 
II.  He  had  emancipated  his  serfs  on  conditions 
that  satisfied  neither  them  nor  their  masters,  and, 
like  most  adventurous  reformers,  he  was  sacrificed 
to  the  principle  of  all  or  none.  His  successor  was 
hardly  encouraged  by  the  example,  and  he  went 
into  gloomy  retirement  by  way  of  giving  himself 
a  chance  of  dying  in  his  bed.  The  Winter  Palace 
was  in  a  state  of  drawn  blinds :  the  Imperial 
family  walked  the  gardens  of  Peterhof  within  a 
ring  of  sixty  thousand  bayonets. 

This  was  unfortunate  for  me,  as  I  particularly 
wished  to  see  the  gallery  of  the  Hermitage,  for 
battle  pictures  or  other  memorials  of  Peter.  The 
Hermitage  is  really  a  private  collection  of  the 
Tsar  to  which  in  quiet  times  the  public  are  ad- 
mitted by  imperial  favour  :  it  adjoins,  and  forms 
part  of  the  Palace.  How  to  get  in  ?  The  will  was 
there,  and  the  way  was  found  by  the  good  offices 
of  the  charge  d'affaires  of  the  United  States.  I 
had  a  special  permit,  and  was  put  under  the  care 


190  MY  HARVEST 

of  a  military  officer,  sword  at  side,  but  of  course 
only  because  he  was  in  uniform.  He  naturally 
had  his  instructions  to  see  all  fair  to  both  parties, 
especially  the  Russian  Government. 

I  had  no  reason  to  complain  of  him — quite  the 
contrary.  He  was  politeness  and  even  court 
politeness  itself.  Though  theoretically  my  leader, 
he  always  bowed  me  in  front  of  him,  and  never 
asked  me  to  turn  right  or  left  without  a  "  will  you 
be  so  exceedingly  obliging  ?  ':  to  preface  the 
request.  It  was  quite  uplifting,  if  only  you  took 
it  in  the  right  way,  and  I  managed  to  do  that  by 
cherishing  the  fancy  that  I  was  his  imperial 
master,  attended  by  an  aide-de-camp.  In  this  way 
we  mounted  the  famous  staircase  of  malachite, 
and  passed  with  echoing  steps  through  the  magnifi- 
cent galleries  decorated  in  an  equally  lavish  way. 
It  was  gratifying,  but  after  a  little  of  it  I  began  to 
pity  my  prototype.  Marooned  in  this  paradise  of 
beauty,  without  a  kindred  soul !  It  was  the  image 
of  the  awful  solitude  of  his  state.  The  clanking 
sabre  of  my  aide-de-camp — I  think  there  were 
spurs  too,  for  the  effect  of  the  minor  key — seemed 
quite  at  cross  purposes  with  the  work  on  the  walls. 
Peasant  interiors,  with  dim  figures  saying  grace 
in  the  light  of  a  farthing  dip,  to  save  them  from 
too  close  an  inspection  of  their  provender  ;  Tempta- 
tions of  St.  Anthony ;  a  Spanish  collection,  the 
finest  in  the  world  outside  of  Madrid  ;  exquisite 
landscapes  of  all  the  schools,  glowing  in  the  soft 
light  of  peace,  happiness  and  the  beatitudes  of  the 
spiritual  life.  How  enjoy  such  things  in  such  a 
void  !  Everything  was  out  of  keeping  :  you  had 


THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY         191 

to  skate  from  masterpiece  to  masterpiece  over  the 
polished  floors. 

Art  and  autocracy  must  often  be  at  cross  pur- 
poses. I  had  met  Count  Zichy  on  the  way  out, 
in  his  retirement  from  the  post  of  painter  to  the 
Russian  Court,  and  he  showed  me  the  drawings 
for  his  pictures,  done  under  conditions  that  make 
all  modern  work  "  to  command  "  almost  invari- 
ably a  failure.  They  were  chiefly  pencilled  sketches 
of  costumes,  in  microscopic  detail.  He  explained 
that  the  first  and  last  consideration  with  the 
august  sitters  was  the  spiritual  import  of  their 
wearing  apparel.  They  seemed  to  have  a  dress 
for  every  circumstance,  every  event,  every  mood 
of  their  superbly  tailored  lives.  It  was  their  only 
way  of  expression,  consistent  with  the  supreme 
necessity  of  saving  a  face  in  lines  of  eternal  calm. 
One  of  his  last  commissions  was  a  picture  of  the 
arrival  at  Sebastopol  of  the  remains  of  the  Tsare- 
vitch  Nicholas,  who  had  died  at  Nice,  his  brother 
succeeding  as  Alexander  III.  The  tremendously 
solemn  import  of  the  ceremony  was  imperilled  at 
every  moment,  by  this  sense  of  the  overlordship 
of  the  outfitter,  in  the  minds  of  all.  Such  and  such 
chamberlains,  admirals,  generals,  governors  of  pro- 
vinces were  in  attendance,  each  in  uniform  which 
had  to  be  rendered  in  its  minutest  detail  of  passe- 
menterie, at  large,  not  omitting  the  bell-ropes  in 
gold  and  silver  lace  that,  on  such  occasions,  dangle 
from  the  shoulder  to  the  chest.  When  these  were 
right,  and  not  a  moment  before,  the  picture  was 
passed,  but  as  no  official  was  in  charge  of  the 
simple  pathos  of  the  matter,  this  came  very 


192  MY  HARVEST 

poorly  off.  The  very  buttons  had  laws  of  their 
own  :  "  kindly  remember,  monsieur  le  peintre.,  that 
my  tunic  has  double  lines  of  two  buttons  with 
alternations  of  three."  All  this  multiplied  into 
the  several  claims  of  epaulette,  sashes,  sword- 
knots,  trouser  stripes  twin  or  single,  orders  and 
stars  !  It  was  as  bad  as  a  wake,  with  the  bier  and 
its  tenant  reduced  to  a  side  show. 

It  was  quite  a  relief  to  have  to  pursue  one's 
researches  in  the  Imperial  library.  Here  was  a 
librarian  who  was  quite  a  fellow  creature  in  the 
first  place,  and  an  official  only  in  the  second.  He 
was  always  helpful,  at  times  somewhat  formally 
polite,  but  beneath  all  this  quite  capable  of  little 
tempers,  and  of  airs  of  lassitude  which  showed 
that  you  had  really  worn  his  patience  to  the  quick. 
It  was  all  very  well  to  be  conscientious  in  your 
work,  and  to  ask  for  this,  that  and  the  other  almost 
beyond  the  resources  of  the  printed  word,  but 
librarians  have  their  feelings,  to  say  nothing  of 
their  dinner  hours.  I  remember  a  final  outburst 
that  brought  me  to  my  senses.  "  It  is,  as  I  have 
already  had  the  honour  to  tell  you,  Monsieur, 
quite  out  of  our  power  to  answer  that  question." 
This  is  the  Russian,  old  and  new,  the  hot  temper 
always  at  hand  to  help  the  goodness  of  heart  out 
of  a  difficulty.  The  combination  of  the  most 
obsequious  civility  with  the  rough  edge  of  some 
original  sin  not  yet  worked  out  of  the  system  was 
particularly  refreshing,  and  it  gave  me  great 
pleasure  in  his  society.  It  had  the  charm  of 
exploration  without  the  labour  of  research,  like  a 
buried  city  within  a  hand's  breadth  of  the  surface. 


THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY         193 

This,  so  far  as  my  observation  goes,  is  character- 
istic of  the  race.  Their  Western  culture  is  but  one 
of  their  rough  coats  worn  inside  out  to  show  a 
silken  lining.  They  are  still  good  fellows,  that  is 
the  main  point,  and  human  in  their  alternations 
of  the  mood  of  the  moment.  I  was  lucky  enough 
to  see  something  of  both  at  their  best. 

The  old  Russian  boyar,  or  noble  type,  I  en- 
countered at  Petersburg — I  beg  its  pardon,  Petro- 
grad.  He  had  a  large  estate  within  the  city,  and 
I  had  been  referred  to  him  as  a  person  who  knew 
all  that  was  worth  knowing  about  the  icono- 
graphy of  Peter  the  Great.  He  might  almost  have 
had  it  at  first  hand  from  Peter,  to  judge  by  the  anti- 
quity of  his  manners  and  customs.  I  found  him, 
by  invitation,  at  a  family  dinner,  and  at  the  head 
of  a  long  table  with  covers  laid  for  thirty  or  so, 
husband  and  wife,  sons  and  sons'  wives  and 
children,  with  a  married  grandchild  here  and  there 
and  his  progeny,  to  make  out.  It  was  the  patri- 
archal roof  tree,  as  you  may  still  find  it  in  our 
old  French  colony  of  Mauritius,  the  dining-room 
as  the  baronial  hall  of  the  clan.  Here,  wherever 
they  lived  in  the  capital,  they  were  expected  to 
assemble  on  Sundays  for  the  family  feast.  He 
was  quite  of  the  old  school,  in  his  long  white  beard 
of  the  days  when  Peter,  fresh  from  his  Western 
tour,  had  to  keep  barbers  at  the  gates  of  the  cities, 
to  bring  Asia  into  line  with  Europe.  His  gar- 
ments were  in  the  bunchy  style  of  his  primitive 
Russian  prints,  wrappers  without  much  concern 
about  a  fit,  the  outer  one  half  dressing-gown.  The 
younger  people  were  as  smart  as  you  could  wish, 


194  MY  HARVEST 

Paris  and  London  at  their  best.  He  was  hail- 
fellow-well-met,  though  in  a  certain  stately  way, 
and  his  manners  were  quite  distinguished.  It 
would  have  been  impossible,  I  should  say,  to  take 
a  liberty  with  him  without  having  to  smart  for  it. 
He  had  a  certain  noble  air  as  of  one  used  to  unques- 
tioning obedience  all  his  life.  The  children  took 
many  liberties  for  all  that,  while  still  watching 
him  to  see  how  far  they  could  go.  So  long  as  he 
merely  roared  calls  to  order  they  had  it  all  their 
own  way,  but  when  he  named  them,  they  stopped 
at  once. 

The  style  of  it  all  must  have  come  straight  down 
for  centuries,  with  hardly  a  change.  To  me,  as  the 
stranger  within  his  gates,  he  was  all  high  courtesy, 
serious  discussion  of  the  purpose  of  my  visit, 
promises  of  aid,  well  kept.  I  don't  know  how 
far  he  ranked  as  a  mere  survival,  I  did  not  see 
enough  of  the  country  to  judge  that,  but  I  fancy 
there  were  more  of  his  sort  than  generally  meet 
the  eye  of  the  tourist.  I  caught  many  glimpses 
of  men  like  him  in  externals,  people  of  the  upper 
middle,  cuddling  huge  bed  pillows  as  part  of  their 
equipment  for  a  railway  journey  and  sometimes 
stores  of  provender  in  bags.  It  is  quite  conceiv- 
able that  he  carried  his  pillow  too  when  he  went 
abroad,  and  laughed  at  his  manicured  sons  and 
daughters  as  milksops  for  being  content  to  find 
all  their  comforts  of  home  in  palace  cars.  I  dare- 
say they  laughed  back  again,  though  with  discre- 
tion, so  it  suited  both  parties.  This  is  Russia  the 
old  and  the  new,  still  side  by  side,  and  with  perfect 
understanding  and  goodfellowship  between  them, 


THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY         195 

and  no  aloofness  to  mark  a  sense  of  the  grades. 
It  was  a  pleasant  contrast  to  the  free  England  I 
had  left  behind. 

After  dinner  we  went  into  the  grounds  where, 
as  it  was  yet  winter,  a  huge  montagne  Russe  was 
reared  for  the  slides.  It  was  the  well-known 
Russian  variety  of  the  toboggan.  You  mount  to 
the  top  of  a  wooden  tower,  throw  yourself  into 
a  sled  and  then  career  at  railway  speed  down  a 
gully  of  dark  gleaming  ice,  banked  on  either  side 
with  snow,  to  reach  a  level  where  the  loss  of  the 
impetus  gradually  slows  you  down  to  a  standstill. 
Then  up  again  and  da  capo  till  you  have  had  your 
fill.  It  is  a  desperate  business  for  a  beginner, 
but  I  was  silly  enough  to  try  it,  even  with  a 
moujik  for  driver.  He  got  me  down  all  right,  but 
I  don't  care  to  say  what  became  of  my  topper  hat 
and  my  dignity. 

This  interior  may  be  contrasted  with  another  of 
a  Russian  salon  of  the  new  generation.  And  still 
it  was  of  the  old  one,  for  whenever  I  think  of  it 
I  am  reminded  of  the  salon  of  Tolstoy's  War  and 
Peace.  The  conversation  was  still  mainly  in 
French,  the  figures,  but  for  the  fashions  of  the  day, 
were  the  same,  governing  ring,  military,  leaders  of 
society.  The  talk  was  politics,  scandal,  rumours 
of  wars,  the  joys  of  life  reduced  by  successive 
cultures  to  the  needs  of  fastidious  souls.  The 
common  topic,  with  which  you  were  always  safe, 
was  the  latest  dancer  at  the  opera.  It  was  the 
Russia  of  the  reaction  against  popular  liberties, 
the  white  terror  over  again,  and  avenging  itself 
on  the  red.  This  was  my  only  glimpse  of  a  society 


196  MY  HARVEST 

of  that  kind,  and  I  freely  own  that  I  felt  afraid  of 
it  as  something  both  decadent  and  unreal.  All 
were  but  playing  a  part,  in  their  smooth-spoken 
cynicism,  their  thick  lacquer  of  polish,  their  almost 
utter  want  of  all  fervour  of  conviction,  where  con- 
viction of  a  kind  must  still  have  had  its  place. 
Their  talk  on  literature,  however,  was  penetrating 
and  good  :  they  launched  the  phrase  as  happily 
as  their  forerunners  of  France,  for  with  their  subtle 
intelligence  this  was  the  charm  they  most  readily 
caught.  But  these  are  not  governing  qualities  in 
our  hurly-burly  of  a  world,  still  awaiting  its 
finishing  touches  as  a  human  settlement.  One 
could  not  help  thinking  of  their  balance  of  fellow 
countrymen,  some  hundred  and  sixty  millions 
strong,  and  wondering  how  long  it  would  last  as  a 
thing  sufficient  to  racial  and  national  needs. 
Minorities  always  rule,  of  course,  but  they  must 
be  strong  ones.  With  all  their  fine  talk,  fine 
manners,  these  good  folk  seemed  to  take  high 
politics  as  some  of  us  nearer  home  take  the  game 
of  bridge.  The  women  were  the  worst  offenders 
in  their  passion  for  social  form.  I  leave  it  as  an 
impression  for  what  it  is  worth,  without  attempting 
to  explain  or  defend. 

Certainly  the  aptitude  of  Russians  for  learning 
things  is  marvellous — a  natural  quickness.  I  knew 
of  one  who  had  four  languages,  besides  her  own, 
at  her  tongue's  end — English,  French,  German, 
Italian.  She  spoke  in  them  and  wrote  in  them. 
And  she  had  something  to  write  about,  a  basis  of 
solid  studies  in  history,  literature  and  the  com- 
merce of  life.  She  thought  in  them,  wrongly 


THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY         197 

enough  sometimes,  as  I  thought,  in  my  turn, 
but  that  was  merely  matter  of  opinion.  The 
thesis  was  there  coherent  and  four  square,  with 
the  power  to  hold  her  own  in  it.  She  was  obsessed 
with  the  idea  of  a  superior  cast  of  mind  to  which 
she  and  her  intellectual  set  belonged.  With  all 
this  she  was  a  most  accomplished  musician,  and 
had  filled  the  Queen's  Hall  more  than  once  for 
concerts  given  in  her  own  name.  I  have  a  certain 
hesitation  in  saying  all  this,  because  it  may  seem 
founded  on  mere  recollections  of  my  reading  in 
prodigies  of  the  past,  our  own  Admirable  Crichton 
or  the  continental  Pico  della  Mirandola.  As  a  lad, 
Crichton  is  said  to  have  known  a  dozen  languages  : 
I  wonder  in  how  many  of  them  he  could  have 
deceived  the  native.  Gilbert  Hamerton  used  to 
say  that  no  more  than  two  can  ever  be  acquired 
in  that  perfection.  The  peculiarity  in  this  lady's 
case  as  a  Russian,  was  that  she  was  one  of  many, 
only  less  richly  endowed.  And  I  hasten  to  add, 
still  with  the  purpose  of  saving  myself,  that  the 
union  of  qualities  precluded  the  marked  bias  for 
one,  that  makes  for  success.  Nothing  in  particular 
seemed  worth  doing,  because  all  seemed  so  easy  to 
do.  The  sense  of  this  limitation  helped  to  kill  Marie 
Bashkirsteff.  Distinction  seemed  ever  to  elude 
her,  till  she  won  it  at  last  by  the  sheer  frankness 
of  her  confession  of  failure.  But  she  was  not  there 
to  enjoy  it  when  it  came.  "  What  shadows  we 
are  " — every  aspiring  soul  should  be  able  to  finish 
the  quotation. 

The  classic  case,  I  think,  in  our  British  experience 
is  Madame  de  Novikoff.     It  was  a  real  part  well 


198  MY  HARVEST 

played  :  there  was  a  moment,  fleeting  as  even 
historic  moments  are,  when  she  figured  as  a  sort 
of  supplementary  ambassador.  She  knew  all  our 
great  people  as  a  friend  and  intimate.  She  wrote 
freely  to  The  Times  with  Holy  Russia  and  "  our 
Tsar  "  for  subjects ;  and  she  had  huge  store  of 
postcards,  to  say  nothing  of  letters  still  unpublish- 
able,  to  show  how  heartily  a  Prime  Minister  of 
England  entered  into  the  fun  of  the  game.  Her 
day  passed,  for  a  meteoric  appearance  like  that 
cannot  possibly  become  an  institution,  but  while 
it  lasted  it  was  enough  to  make  her  one  of  the 
women  of  the  time.  She  seemed  rather  out  of  place 
in  England,  where  every  fine-drawn  scheme  is  apt 
to  be  upset  by  a  chilly  blast  of  popular  feeling. 
Yet  she  has  lived  to  see  a  Russian  Alliance  for  all 
that. 

I  was  so  lucky  as  to  find  Turguenieff  at  Petersburg, 
and  to  obtain  access  to  him  through  a  friend.  Him 
I  have  always  regarded  as  one  of  the  first  rates, 
because  he  did  so  much  to  reveal  his  native  Russia 
to  the  Western  world.  I  called  on  him  one  Sunday 
morning  and  found  him  with  two  or  three  friends. 
There  was  no  mystery  in  their  meeting,  yet  to 
me  it  had  quite  the  air  of  a  gathering  of  initiates 
of  a  forbidden  faith — say  Nicodemus  taking  his 
first  course.  When  I  strolled  from  there  into  the 
neighbouring  cathedral,  with  its  worshippers  pros- 
trate on  the  marble  floor,  I  saw  that  this  fancy 
was  merely  an  atmospheric  effect. 

He  received  me  most  kindly,  and  showed 
interest  in  the  work  on  which  I  was  engaged,  but 
was  sparing  in  his  references  to  things  Russian, 


THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY         199 

as  though  he  felt  that  he  was  on  the  wrong  side  of 
the  frontier  for  that.  What  he  thought  of  his 
native  land  and  of  its  political  and  social  life  was 
in  his  works,  for  all  who  knew  how  to  find  his 
meaning.  He  lived  abroad,  but  as  the  interpreter 
of  Russia  to  herself  and  to  the  foreigner,  it  was 
not  to  his  interest  to  deprive  himself  of  all  chance 
of  occasional  contact  with  the  living  text.  Verest- 
chagin  used  occasionally  to  scoff  at  him  as  wanting 
in  pluck,  but  the  great  writer  knew  what  he  was 
about,  and  his  was  by  far  the  finer  mind. 

The  Parisian  circle  of  his  acquaintance  was  at 
once  large  and  select.  He  mastered  all  that 
France  had  to  teach  him  in  literature,  and,  while 
equal  to  her  best,  as  a  craftsman  of  philosophic 
fiction,  he  had  a  just  sense  of  their  lack  of  contact 
at  first  hand  with  the  deeper  tragedy  of  life.  When 
this  secret  came  out  in  posthumous  indiscretions, 
based  on  his  diaries  and  letters,  it  was  a  little  dis- 
concerting to  find  that  he  had  no  great  opinion  of 
Alphonse  Daudet,  but,  as  you  got  used  to  it,  easy 
to  bear.  It  agreed  with  thoughts  that  had  flitted 
through  one's  own  mind,  without  being  asked  to 
stay,  for  lack  of  courage.  The  French  writer  was 
a  little  too  manifestly  anxious  to  please  :  urbanity 
has  its  price.  The  Lettres  de  Mon  Moulin,  where- 
with he  bounded  into  public  notice,  are  a  trifle 
insipid  on  a  second  reading,  as  being  too  much 
about  all  the  certificated  nice  things  nicely  said. 
Octave  Feuillet,  as  we  have  already  seen,  was  the 
arch  offender  in  this  way,  with  his  eternal  theme 
of  the  hero  as  prig.  Daudet  was  naturally  upset 
by  his  friend's  frankness,  and  he  wrote  bitter 


200  MY  HARVEST 

things  about  hospitality  violated,  by  a  not  too 
amiable  Russian  from  the  Steppe,  which  were  much 
beside  the  mark. 

Gorki,  a  writer  of  the  same  serious  sense  of  the 
calling  as  his  compatriot,  came  my  way  years 
after,  and  in  a  rather  curious  manner.  One  day, 
as  he  was  passing  through  England  to  take  up 
his  long  residence  in  the  milder  climate  of  Italy, 
I  received  an  invitation  to  meet  him  at  dinner  at 
the  chambers  of  Mr.  Hagberg  Wright.  A  dozen  or 
so  were  at  the  board,  among  them  Nevinson  and 
Bernard  Shaw.  It  could  hardly  be  called  a  sociable 
gathering,  for  the  guest  of  the  evening  had  no 
language  but  his  own,  and  most  of  the  others  were 
without  Russian.  Our  felicitations  therefore  had 
first  to  be  offered  in  English  or  French,  and  then 
turned  into  his  mother  tongue  by  the  lady  who 
accompanied  him — with  the  process  reversed,  of 
course,  for  his  acknowledgments.  It  became  as 
tedious  as  an  extradition  case  in  the  unknown 
tongue.  He  said  something  amiable  to  me  about 
my  work,  and  I  could  not  help  asking  him  how 
he  came  to  know  anything  about  it.  "  I  have  read 
it  in  translation,"  he  said.  I  pricked  up  my  ears  : 
no  application  for  leave  had  reached  me  from  that 
quarter.  As  I  afterwards  learned,  it  was  not 
required.  The  piracy  was  still  a  compliment  of  a 
kind,  and  I  left  it  at  that,  no  doubt  to  the  perfect 
satisfaction  of  all  concerned. 

Naples  set  him  up  again — his  lungs  were  in  a 
very  weak  state.  I  hope  he  has  suffered  no  relapse, 
by  his  patriotic  offer  to  take  his  place  in  the  ranks 
for  the  war  of  1914.  There  was  a  twofold  risk. 


THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY         201 

For  a  long  time  he  found  his  native  air  a  less 
dangerous  adversary  than  his  native  Government. 
His  first  attempt  to  repatriate  himself  ended  in  a 
precipitate  flight  back  to  the  south.  Russia  will 
have  to  find  a  better  way  of  using  men  like  that 
than  to  put  truth-telling  into  her  penal  code. 
There  are  signs  that  the  present  struggle  of  nations 
and  races  may  lead  her  to  mend  her  ways.  The 
offer  to  Poland  gives  ground  for  hope,  but  no 
more  can  be  said,  while  Finland  still  mourns  the 
loss  of  her  chartered  liberties.  If  all  is  to  be,  even 
second  best  in  the  world — and  Pangloss  himself 
would  now  hardly  put  in  his  claim  for  more — 
democracy  must  be  allowed  to  try  her  hand. 
Everything  else  has  been  tried,  and  see  where  we 
are  to-day  !  with  the  only  light  in  the  sky  focussed 
on  the  shining  armour  of  the  war  lord,  on  his 
knees  to  the  United  States  for  a  smile. 

Tolstoy  has  left  a  literature  for  the  masses  more 
stupendous  in  conception  and  execution  than  even 
all  his  earlier  work.  It  is  little  read  outside  of 
Russia,  but  its  regenerating  power  for  the  spirit 
of  man  is  simply  incalculable.  As  a  miracle  of 
mere  technic  it  stands  alone,  with  this  giant  of 
intellect  and  heart  making  himself  again,  in  his  old 
age,  as  a  little  child,  to  bring  the  highest  thought 
to  the  humblest  minds. 

It  is  curious  to  study  ideals  and  usages  as  they 
actually  function  to  make  the  whole  world  kin. 
The  community  of  great  ideas  is  of  course  the 
finest  example,  especially  the  community  of  the 
emotions.  But  these  still  have  different  springs 
according  to  the  latitude  and  longitude,  and 


202  MY  HARVEST 

besides  you  have  to  know  a  people  well  to  discover 
what  is  really  astir  in  their  souls.  Meanwhile 
mere  superficial  manners  and  customs  may  some- 
times give  a  clue  of  a  kind.  The  very  fashions  are 
not  to  be  despised.  You  may  now  travel  all  across 
Europe  and  Asia,  and  find  traces  of  the  reigning 
hat,  male  or  female,  of  the  Boulevard.  I  know  it 
is  so  in  Europe  and  I  hazard  the  rest  on  trust.  It 
is  the  same  with  the  amusements,  especially  those 
of  the  grosser  sort.  The  music-hall — one  rather 
takes  shame  to  say  it — is  a  bond  of  union  to-day. 
If  I  had  been  prepared  with  that  reflection  in  time, 
it  would  have  saved  me  a  shock  at  the  sight  of  a 
lion  comique  at  Petersburg.  There  he  was  in  a  close 
imitation  of  the  make-up  of  his  prototype,  The 
Great  Vance,  then  our  star  above  the  horizon.  It 
was  faultless  as  to  evening-dress  and  crush  hat, 
not  forgetting  the  button-hole.  The  "  swell  "  of 
popular  vision  was  the  thing  aimed  at  in  each  case. 
The  racial  differentiation  came  in  with  the  artist's 
reading  of  his  part.  The  Briton  idealized  in  mere 
jolly-dogism,  spreeing  in  floods  of  champagne,  and 
4  to-morrow  we'll  get  sober.'  The  Russian  did 
better  than  that.  His  little  song  had  the  national 
nitchevo — for  its  burden,  but  in  this  case  only  as  a 
mere  devil-may-care,  for  the  want  of  something 
to  care  about  on  your  own  account.  Quite  freely 
rendered,  it  might  have  stood  for  '  what's  the 
use  ?  ' — a  deeper  strain,  I  thought,  than  ours. 

There  it  is — the  deeper  strain  of  thought  and 
feeling !  Our  current  criticism  is  beginning  to 
be  better  informed  as  to  the  real  and  effective 
Russian  fiction  of  our  time :  Turguenieff,  Dostoieffsky 


THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY         203 

and  Gogol  are  now,  it  seems,  to  Russians,  but 
as  Jane  Austen,  Dickens,  and  Fielding  are  to 
us.  One  makes  acquaintance  with  strange  names 
such  as  Chekhof,  Kouprin,  Andreef,  Sologub,  and 
a  host  of  others,  as  with  the  names  of  new  stars 
in  the  firmament.  All  stand  for  the  short  story ; 
the  classic  three-decker  or  so  of  the  earlier  Tolstoy 
model  is  not  dead,  but  it  is  out  of  vogue.  The  new 
men  say  their  say  in  fifty  pages  and  still  contrive 
to  omit  nothing  that  counts.  Chekhof  the  optimist 
— a  rare  bird  in  that  quarter — can,  we  are  told, 
make  a  story  out  of  three  sentences  and  an  inter- 
rogation mark — perhaps,  after  all,  only  to  prove 
that  it  is  possible  to  make  too  little  of  a  good 
thing.  Most  of  them,  I  regret  to  say,  I  can  as  yet 
but  hope  to  read,  if  only  for  profitable  nightmares. 
My  next  stage  was  Moscow,  for  special  research 
in  the  archives  of  the  Kremlin.  The  harvest  was 
a  little  too  rich  for  the  flying  visitor.  Pictured 
costumes  of  every  period,  especially  of  course  of 
the  time  when  Peter  began  to  take  matters  in 
hand.  Rude  merrymakings  and  drinking  bouts, 
great  battle  pieces  with  the  armies  drawn  up  to 
fit  the  squares  of  a  sort  of  chessboard  that  stood 
for  the  field,  with  infantry  lost,  as  it  were,  in  the 
pine  forests  of  their  own  spears  towering  to  the 
sky,  rectangular  cavalry  and  artillery  on  the  same 
plan.  It  was  the  formation  of  the  time  and  it 
served  to  disconcert  Turk  and  Swede,  among  the 
bonniest  fighters  in  history.  Perhaps  the  Scots' 
soldier  of  fortune  in  Peter's  service  had  brought 
the  pikes  oversea.  They  saved  the  little  there  was 
to  save  at  Flodden  and  won  Bannockburn. 


204  MY  HARVEST 

Then  of  course  there  was  the  Kremlin,  the  forti- 
fied city  within  the  city,  white  stoned  and  still 
looking  as  new  as  when  it  rose  from  its  ashes  after 
the  burning.  Within,  a  bunch  of  little  churches 
and  official  buildings,  some  with  the  dignity  of 
shrines,  all  close  together  like  things  packed  in  a 
box.  Even  the  great  coronation  church  is  but  a 
chapel  of  ease  beside  Westminster  Abbey,  or  the 
cathedral  of  Rheims — what  is  left  of  this  now  ! 
One,  and  that  the  most  perfect  gem  of  orthodox 
art,  is  almost  too  small  for  use.  You  make  the 
round  of  it  in  a  jiffy,  and  go  from  turret  to  turret 
by  passages  in  which  there  is  hardly  room  for 
two  abreast.  Kneel  in  some  of  the  shrines  if  you 
can,  when  two  or  three  are  gathered  together : 
like  most  buildings  public  or  private  in  Russia 
they  are  stuffy  to  the  last  degree.  The  idea  seems 
to  be — keep  out  the  cold  by  keeping  out  the  fresh 
air,  and  warming  up  the  stale  with  everlasting 
fires.  A  mouthful  of  it  is  something  to  bite.  The 
smell  of  incense  in  possession  is  often  as  old  as  the 
buildings.  The  Tsar  sniffs  the  ages  as  he  sits  on 
his  coronation  throne.  The  jewelled  ikons  suggest 
untapped  sources  of  wealth  :  the  Russian  Church 
has  levied  tribute  of  this  sort  for  centuries.  At  the 
Troitska  monastery,  according  to  the  legend,  the 
cellars  are  full  of  precious  stones :  a  new  Aladdin 
would  only  have  to  broach  the  casks  in  which  they 
are  stored. 

And  all  I  still  had  to  miss  !  for  want  of  time, 
opportunity,  knowledge — Moscow  winning  its  way 
back  to  true  metropolitan  rank  as  the  centre  of  the 
Panslavist  movement  and  of  the  Panslavist  faith. 


THE  REAL  ASIAN  MYSTERY         205 

I  returned  to  Paris  only  to  find  that  I  should 
soon  have  to  set  out  once  more.  Sehuyler  was 
getting  behindhand  with  his  copy  for  the  serial 
issue,  and  wanted  a  clerical  lift.  This  took  me 
and  my  amanuensis  to  Rome  in  the  depth  of 
winter.  We  dug  him  out  of  a  mass  of  proof,  or  of 
notes  awaiting  the  shorthand  writer,  and  saved 
the  situation,  but  it  was  a  close  thing.  At  the 
farewell  luncheon,  he  led  me  into  his  study 
for  coffee  and  cigarettes,  and  for  the  welcome 
warmth  of  my  first  charcoal  fire.  I  reached  the 
station  almost  in  a  state  of  collapse  :  the  fumes 
had  poisoned  me.  However,  I  managed  to  stagger 
to  the  train,  and  to  sleep  it  off  in  nightmare  visions 
'  before  the  journey's  end. 


CHAPTER  XV 
AMERICA  IN  FACT  AND  FANCY 

I  SAW  America  for  the  first  time  in  1876.  It 
was  the  year  of  the  great  exhibition  to  cele- 
brate the  centennial  of  Independence,  and  Phila- 
delphia sent  out  her  cards  for  company  to  the 
human  race.  Another  visit  followed  a  year  or 
two  later,  my  last  at  this  time  of  writing.  I  had 
glimpses  of  other  cities,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
but  I  never  got  further  west  than  Chicago.  It 
was  my  loss,  but  in  the  same  circumstances  of 
limited  time  and  opportunity  I  should  have  to 
suffer  the  same  misfortune. 

My  first  impression  was  how  like  England  it  is ; 
ancient  ways,  sturdy  British  types  and  ideals — 
with  a  new  departure  in  hospitality  on  trust  with- 
out waiting  a  lifetime  to  make  your  acquaintance  : 
even  a  refreshing  absence  of  'cuteness,  at  any  rate 
near  the  surface,  the  only  thing  I  touched.  This 
was  mainly  a  fancy,  for  I  daresay  I  found  what 
I  came  to  seek.  It  was  still  the  America  of  my 
boyish  acquaintance  with  the  literature — memories 
of  Washington  Irving  as  a  classic,  in  new  elegant 
extracts  of  the  time  ;  of  Fenimore  Cooper,  as  a 
delightful  variant  of  Scott,  and  of  his  noble  savage 
of  the  hills,  touching  civilization  as  with  tongs. 
Add  to  these,  from  keepsakes  and  the  like,  memories 

206 


AMERICA  IN  FACT  AND  FANCY      207 

of  Mrs.  Sigourney,  the  travelling  American  inter- 
preter of  the  'forties,  between  the  old  land  and 
the  new,  and  of  Peter  Parley  who,  in  a  single 
sentence  of  his  travels — "  the  streets  of  Paris  are 
narrow,  and  often  very  dirty,"  still  serves  to  carry 
one  back  to  the  days  before  the  Flood.  At  any  rate 
to  those  before  Monsieur  Haussmann,  with  Balzac 
looking  on. 

In  the  higher  sphere  of  my  later  reading  it  was 
much  the  same.  Longfellow's  New  England  was 
but  the  old  one,  in  inspiration.  Bryant  derived 
from  Spenser,  and  by  a  kind  of  condescension  in  a 
man  of  his  genius,  from  Kirke  White  and  Blair. 
Holmes  and  Lowell,  and  even  the  august  Haw- 
thorne, still  struck  our  native  note.  Others, 
defiant  of  this  easy  classification,  were  Emerson — 
I  think  the  most  abiding  influence  on  my  life — 
Whitman,  Mark  Twain,  and  Henry  James.  As 
for  Emerson,  I  have  always  felt  that,  when  he 
went  to  see  Carlyle,  the  etiquette  of  kings  required 
an  immediate  return  of  the  visit. 

All  this  was  confirmed,  as  to  tendencies,  by 
later  contact  with  American  settlers  in  Paris. 
The  colony  of  the  demi-millionaires  who  had  made 
their  fortunes  in  trade — the  half — of  that  earlier 
age,  being  as  good  as  the  whole  of  ours  for  the 
dreams  of  avarice.  The  colony  of  the  diplomats, 
absolutely  new  to  the  business,  who  had  found  their 
harvest  in  the  spoils  of  the  vanquished,  combined 
perhaps  with  services  in  the  Civil  War,  and  who 
made  up  for  lack  of  training  with  the  help  of  the 
permanent  secretary  and  mother  wit.  As  often 
as  not,  these  had  started  in  real  estate,  or  in  The 


208  MY  HARVEST 

Balm  of  a  Thousand  Flowers.  In  exceptional  cases 
their  grandes  dames  were  at  times  too  exclusively 
based  on  recollections  of  Ouida.  One  I  knew 
never  spoke  to  a  servant  whether  for  praise  or 
blame,  but  signified  her  wishes  by  signs,  and  had 
her  rooms  carpeted  in  double  pile  for  the  effect  of 
ineffable  repose.  Ask  me  what  was  the  common 
note,  and  I  should  have  to  say  that  they  were  all 
bland,  equally  the  virtue  of  a  good  salad  and  of 
a  good  soul. 

Then  the  colony  of  the  artists,  who  carried  on 
the  tradition  of  Couture,  and  sold  at  good  prices, 
and  rode  their  nag  in  the  Bois — all  heedless,  for 
the  moment,  of  the  youngsters,  like  Sargent,  who 
were  so  soon  to  throw  them  out  of  their  stride.  I 
knew  of  one  such,  majestic  in  his  sorrows,  whose  cry 
was  "  Oh  ye  gods  and  little  teapots !  V existence  rfest 
qu'un  lourd  fardeau"  as  he  declined  in  his  old  age 
to  fancy  portraits  of  ancestors  at  so  much  a  foot, 
to  boil  the  pot  for  the  day. 

So  of  course  when  I  landed  I  found  all  my 
automata  in  waiting.  The  man  of  colour  was 
rather  a  novelty,  especially  when  I  saw  him  on  the 
box  seat  of  the  family  coach,  and  wanting  every 
inch  of  it  as  he  rolled  comfortably  from  side  to 
side.  Yet  what  was  that,  after  all,  but  a  bit  of  the 
4  Ole  Virginny  '  of  my  dreams,  with  St.  Clair  of 
Uncle  Tom  in  his  chariot  of  state. 

What  a  gulf,  what  an  abysm  of  time  between  all 
this  and  the  America  of  to-day,  alive  at  all  points, 
and  in  the  van  of  every  new  movement  if  she  dies 
for  it !  So  much  has  happened  between  then  and 
now — to  give  us  Mrs.  Wharton,  for  instance,  as 


AMERICA  IN  FACT  AND  FANCY      209 

the  successor  of  Mrs.  Sigourney,  and  Mr.  Henry 
James  as  the  successor  of  himself.  I  remember 
him  so  well  at  the  period  of  change,  when  Daisy 
Miller  was  still  in  the  freshness  of  her  first  youth, 
and  he  paced  the  beach  at  Etretat — in  the  crowd 
but  not  of  it — as  he  meditated  new  and  wondrous 
departures  in  the  metaphysics  of  his  craft.  His 
early  work  was  not  wicked  enough  for  some  of 
the  rising  school,  vaguely  conscious  of  a  want  they 
could  hardly  express,  and,  if  asked  to  try,  calling 
him  a  Massachusetts  Sir  Galahad. 

The  new  school,  the  new  departures  into  the 
literature  of  life,  manners,  breadth  of  outlook,  all 
that  tends  to  make  literature  vital,  directly 
resulted  from  the  grant  of  copyright  to  the  old 
country.  Fair  terms  for  the  English  writer,  who 
could  no  longer  be  pirated,  proved  to  be  still  fairer 
for  the  American,  who,  with  infinitely  more  to 
say  for  American  readers,  found  no  paying  market 
for  his  work  while  his  rival's  could  be  had  for 
nothing.  With  that  new  encouragement,  he  set 
forth  on  a  second  discovery  of  his  own  continent, 
in  character,  adventure,  local  colour,  and  spiritual 
type  that  is  in  full  course  to-day. 

My  most  interesting  discovery  in  America  was 
W.H.H. — we  never  called  him  anything  else.  He 
was  my  editor  at  the  New  York  World,  but  of 
course,  while  there  were  three  thousand  miles  of 
sea  between  us,  hardly  a  thing  of  flesh  and  blood 
to  me.  We  met  as  soon  as  I  reached  New  York. 
I  called  by  appointment  at  his  chambers  in,  I  think, 
the  University  Building,  though  no  longer  put  to 
University  uses,  and  the  best  thing  I  had  seen  in 


210  MY  HARVEST 

a  kind  of  cloistral  seclusion  on  that  side  of  the  great 
deep.  I  was  shown  into  a  spacious  room  adorned 
with  bronzes  and  pictures,  all  of  them  good,  and 
some  by  masters.  The  books  in  several  languages 
were  of  the  same  quality.  I  remember  the  bright- 
ness of  the  morning,  the  light  making  a  clear  cut 
of  the  shade,  and  falling  on  a  small  water-melon 
which  I  suppose  was  to  be  his  appetiser  for  break- 
fast. All  was  in  keeping  of  style,  say,  with  a 
Hogarthian  interior,  including  the  black  boy  who 
had  ushered  me  in.  And  then  the  great  man  fresh 
from  his  bath,  and  with  the  exception  of  his  silken 
dressing-gown,  another  eighteenth-century  touch, 
quite  ready  for  company.  The  tall  figure  had 
passed  the  turning-point  of  middle  age,  yet  there 
was  still  plenty  of  life  in  his  smile,  and  particularly 
in  his  wonderfully  bright  eyes. 

His  talk  contributed  to  the  impression  of  some- 
thing out  of  the  past.  It  was  deliberately  good  as 
talk,  though  rather  too  much  in  the  modern  note 
of  social  brag.  In  a  quarter  of  an  hour  he  had 
managed  to  show  that  he  knew  everybody  worth 
knowing  in  both  hemispheres.  It  was  evident 
that  most  of  the  European  capitals  were,  as  Mrs. 
Gamp  said  in  another  connexion,  as  print  to  him. 
I  believe  her  reference  was  to  the  wickedness  of 
the  age,  but  it  might  have  stood  all  the  same. 

He  had  taken  over  the  New  York  World  long 
before  Mr.  Pulitzer  came  upon  the  scene.  I  believe 
he  was  backed  by  Mr.  Tilden.  His  idea  was  to 
make  it  a  model  of  good  writing,  and  he  was  able 
to  do  that.  He  was  master  of  the  '  civil  leer  '  of 
Pope's  Atticus,  and  it  was  his  pride  to  kill  with  a 


AMERICA  IN  FACT  AND  FANCY      211 

touch.  He  collected  a  brilliant  staff,  not  all  of  his 
way  of  thinking  in  politics,  but  with  literary  finish 
as  their  bond  of  union  with  the  chief.  William 
Brownell,  subsequently  the  author  of  the  finest 
and  most  searching  study  of  French  life,  art  and 
character  of  our  time,  was  one  of  them,  Montgomery 
Schuyler  was  another.  There  was  touch  in  even 
the  reports  of  fires.  They  slew  De  Witt  Talmage 
every  week.  As  he  preached  on  Sunday  in  full 
vigour  of  rhetoric,  they  left  him  at  his  last  gasp 
in  Monday's  issue — of  course  only  to  offer  them 
just  as  good  a  target  for  that  day  week.  Their 
esprit  de  corps  was  astonishing — it  was  a  glorious 
attribute  of  their  youth  :  they  felt  a  stain  on  their 
professional  smartness  like  a  wound.  One  of  them 
who  as  City  Editor  had  missed  an  item,  peached 
on  himself,  and  offered  his  resignation  on  the  spot. 
Their  editor,  as  a  travelled  man,  took  sole  charge 
of  the  social  scene  of  the  whole  planet.  He  went 
constantly  to  Europe  for  fresh  impressions,  and 
to  pick  up  important  people  who  were  not  on  his 
list.  Even  the  mystical  Laurence  Oliphant,  of  that 
forgotten  masterpiece  of  fiction  Piccadilly,  was 
under  his  spell,  and  bowed  his  proud  head  to  the 
interviewer.  The  only  other  with  whom  our  leader 
shared  that  kind  of  mastery  was  Lake  Harris,  the 
arch  mystic  of  some  American  phalanstery.  His 
orders,  transmitted  by  spiritual  wireless  across 
oceans  and  continents,  brought  Oliphant  to  heel  in 
a  moment,  wherever  he  might  be.  Piccadilly  comes 
to  a  close  in  that  way.  The  master's  call  from 
distant  America  finds  the  disciple  in  that  compass 
point  of  British  fashion  which  gives  its  title  to  the 


212  MY  HARVEST 

book,  and  he  starts  at  once.  In  the  long  run, 
unfortunately,  he  went  once  too  often,  taking  his 
family  in  tow,  with  direful  results  to  the  integrity 
of  their  fortunes,  and  of  their  souls.  It  was  a 
tribute  to  the  powers  of  W.H.H.  that  he  was  able 
to  make  a  part  for  himself  against  a  pontiff  of  that 
sort. 

Much  more  about  him  came  to  me  afterwards 
in  the  talk  of  the  time.  There  was  a  sort  of  syn- 
thesis of  W.H.H.  in  the  clubs  and  the  drawing- 
rooms.  People  smiled  when  he  was  named,  yet 
took  care  to  right  themselves  by  saying — "  O, 
he's  a  card  !  ':  I  learned  that  he  was  a  duplicate 
of  Aaron  Burr  in  regard  to  his  extraordinary 
influence  over  women.  He  could  make  them 
believe  what  he  liked  about  himself,  on  the  one 
hand,  about  his  enemies  on  the  other.  He  was 
sympathetic,  unscrupulous,  fascinating,  merciless — 
according  to  the  needs  of  the  situation.  Here  and 
there,  in  the  retirement  of  lodgings  in  a  German 
spa,  you  might  find  one  who  was  expiating  him  as 
an  offence  for  which  there  was  no  hope  of  pardon, 
and  hardly  any  desire.  He  had  made  her  talked 
about,  and  she  had  fled  there  to  music,  art  and 
memories  to  make  the  best  of  a  broken  life.  Another, 
still  in  the  haunts  of  men,  carried  his  portrait  in 
the  innermost  recess  of  a  double  locket,  on  a  fatuous 
estimate  of  herself  as  the  only  she.  He  had  the 
spell.  Where  he  was  not  known  he  could  have 
little  doubt  of  the  result.  Where  he  was,  he  fell 
back  on  his  power  of  suggestion,  and  got  himself 
accepted  as  the  lost  one  who  had  found  his  minister- 
ing angel.  This  had  its  risks  for  the  ministrant. 


AMERICA  IN  FACT  AND  FANCY      213 

Vigny's  Eloa,  we  remember,  in  trying  to  raise  a 
demon  up  to  heaven  succeeds  only  in  bringing  an 
angel  down  to  the  pit. 

In  this  line  his  reputation  was  of  old  date.  As 
far  back  as  the  Civil  War,  Winthrop,  one  of  its 
victims,  had  written  a  novel  round  him,  Cecil 
Dreeme,  a  classic  of  its  time.  Nobody,  I  suppose, 
reads  it  now.  He  figured  there  as  the  arch  villain 
of  a  sombre  piece.  The  date  of  the  story  is  now 
almost  remote  enough  to  carry  him  into  legend. 
But  in  current  talk  strange  tales  were  told  of  his 
early  life  at  a  theological  college,  where  he  preached 
the  most  edifying  trial  sermons,  and  wrote  hymns, 
one  of  which  still  retains  its  place  in  the  collections. 

For  many,  even  of  his  detractors,  he  was  another 
biggest  thing  in  creation.  It  was  prodigy  at  least, 
and  he  had  the  additional  attraction  of  being  on 
the  higher  social  plane.  In  this  way  they  found 
a  use  for  him  as  a  link  between  decadent  Europe, 
and  a  still  Puritan  America  not  unwilling  to  toy 
with  the  follies  of  the  age.  He  became  a  sort  of 
introducer  of  celebrities  for  the  dinner  parties  of 
Fifth  Avenue.  Was  it  a  duke,  W.H.H.  had  met  him 
on  his  native  heath  ;  was  it  a  poet  or  a  sage — he 
had  capped  verses  with  him,  or  axioms  of  worldly 
wisdom,  under  foreign  skies.  On  one  of  these  occa- 
sions I  found  him  chatting  the  high  life  of  both 
spheres  in  French,  Spanish,  Italian — one  down 
t'other  come  on,  with  a  brio  that  fascinated  the 
whole  circle.  It  was  Alcibiades  playing  off  a  rugged 
old  Spartan  ephor  against  a  satrap  of  the  great 
king,  each  without  a  particle  of  faith  in  him,  but 
captive  to  his  charm. 


214  MY  HARVEST 

Then  came  the  last  act  of  the  piece.  Tired  of 
these  facile  triumphs,  and  perhaps  aware  of  the 
approaches  of  old  age,  he  married,  and  cleared 
out  for  the  final  conquest  of  London.  Here  his 
part  was  that  of  the  interpreter  of  America  to 
England,  the  warm  friend  and  admirer  of  the 
latter,  but  only  as  one  who  had  nothing  at  heart 
but  the  good  of  both.  It  was  the  time  of  the  great 
divide  on  the  question  of  Home  Rule.  The 
Unionists,  whether  Liberal  or  Conservative,  wanted 
arguments  against  the  hated  measure  that  should 
bear  the  stamp  of  the  just  man  made  perfect  by 
his  freedom  from  national  prejudice  and  party  ties. 
He  was  soon  ready  for  them  with  a  beautiful  book 
on  the  subject,  which  captured  society  in  the  mass, 
and  opened  to  him  every  drawing-room  of  the 
sacred  mile.  It  was  written  rather  in  sorrow 
than  in  anger.  It  chid  the  clannish  spirit  of  the 
Irish  in  the  States.  It  predicted  danger  to  the 
sacred  fabric  of  the  British  Constitution  in  a  new 
Tammany  of  imperial  scope.  The  Unionist 
reviewers  were  in  raptures  over  it  as  the  ripe 
fruit  of  the  wisdom  of  the  ages.  It  promised  to 
root  him  for  ever  in  the  generous  soil  of  Mayfair. 

And  then,  suddenly,  a  bolt  from  the  blue  : 
his  name  in  other  columns  of  the  papers — as 
defendant  in  a  suit  of  breach  of  promise  of  the 
most  sordid  caste.  The  plaintiff  a  third-rate 
actress,  if  so  much  as  that — Nobody  versus  the 
Darling  of  the  gods — Nobody,  picked  up  in  a 
London  omnibus,  and  but  '  the  other  day '  of 
the  date  of  the  action,  while  his  recently  assumed 
crown  of  a  well-spent  life  was  still  rather  a  tight 


AMERICA  IN  FACT  AND  FANCY      215 

fit.  What  a  trial  it  was  !  days — weeks  of  it,  as 
recollection  serves.  Reams  of  criminating  letters 
— either  in  his  handwriting  or  in  that  of  the  enemy 
of  mankind,  said  the  experts.  The  plaintiff  sticking 
to  her  story  of  at  least  a  desperate  flirtation,  with 
the  promise  of  marriage  ;  the  defendant  laying  his 
hand  on  his  heart  and  declaring  that  he  had  never 
seen  or  exchanged  a  word  with  her  in  the  whole 
course  of  his  life.  Then,  the  offer  of  an  hypothesis, 
in  the  nature  of  happy  second  thoughts  on  his 
side,  that  might  possibly  clear  up  the  whole 
mystery.  Years  before,  he  had  a  private  secretary, 
one  Wilfrid  Murray,  now  lost  in  space,  who  wrote 
exactly  the  same  hand  as  himself :  could  he  be 
the  Simon  Pure  of  this  strange  delusion  ?  Cries 
for  the  production  of  the  secretary  on  the  part  of 
the  public  ;  and,  on  that  of  the  defendant,  lavish 
advertisements  offering  rewards  for  the  discovery. 
Finally,  sensational  appearance  of  the  lawful  wife 
in  the  witness  box  to  testify  that  her  belief  in  her 
husband's  honour  was  unimpaired.  On  this  he 
won  his  case.  The  jury  found  that,  whoever  wrote 
the  letters,  they  carried  no  promise  of  marriage, 
and  there  was  no  more  to  be  said. 

But  there  was  still  something  to  be  done,  and 
that  was  the  impounding  of  the  letters  at  the 
instance  of  the  Public  Prosecutor,  with  a  view 
to  making  them  the  foundation  of  a  charge  of 
perjury  against  a  person  as  yet  unnamed.  On 
that,  the  sudden  departure  from  England  of  the 
hero  of  the  piece,  his  ostensible  motive  the  search 
for  Wilfrid  Murray  throughout  the  universe.  He 
never  came  within  the  jurisdiction  again.  No 


216  MY  HARVEST 

long  time  after,  appeared  a  letter  from  the  devoted 
wife  to  say  that  he  had  died  in  her  arms  by  the 
borders  of  one  of  the  Italian  lakes,  and  to  call 
down  public  odium  on  the  wretches  who  had 
hounded  an  innocent  man  to  his  ruin.  It  was  a 
fourth  act  that  amply  fulfilled  the  promise  of  the 
others  ;  and  of  how  few  dramas  on  the  stage,  or 
of  real  life,  can  you  say  as  much  as  that  ? 

So  if  I  am  ever  to  see  the  States  again  it  will 
be  as  a  new  Rip  Van  Winkle,  richly  freighted 
with  memories  of  their  own  past.  Need  I  say 
more  than  that  I  remember  horse  omnibuses  in 
Broadway,  with  the  fare  poked  through  a  hole  in 
the  roof,  and  The  Tribune  building  as  the  supple- 
mentary wonder  of  the  world. 

And  if,  with  that,  one  had  the  same  power  of 
forecasting  their  future !  All  one  can  do  at  present 
in  that  way  is  to  note  portents  and  signs.  I  have 
already  noted  some  of  them  in  the  literature  :  I 
return  to  that.  The  fiction  is  no  longer  mainly 
British  in  subject,  and  where  it  sometimes  is  so, 
it  is  still  not  British  in  treatment  and  in  the  point 
of  view.  From  Cable,  from  Mark  Twain,  from 
Bret  Harte,  down  to  the  author  of  Mrs.  Wiggs 
and  the  Cabbage  Patch,  the  themes  are  nearly  all 
American.  And  in  many  instances  the  treatment 
is  absolutely  American  too.  Mark  Twain's  humour 
is  not  in  the  least  the  humour  of  Swift,  or  of 
Rabelais  ;  it  is  an  American  product.  Mr.  Dooley 
too  is  of  the  soil.  It  would  be  impossible  to  imagine 
anything  more  purely  American,  anything  less 
indebted  to  observation,  literary  or  otherwise,  of 
any  foreign  model  than  the  work  of  Joel  Chandler 


AMERICA  IN  FACT  AND  FANCY      217 

Harris.  He  has  put  a  new  type  into  literature, 
new,  right  down  to  its  very  roots,  that  will  stand 
by  itself  for  ever. 

Then  in  criticism,  the  influences  are  mainly 
French.  Not  only  is  there  a  warm  welcome 
given  to  writers  like  Bourget  and  Rod,  but  native 
writers  of  the  standard  of  Brownell  are  French, 
or  nothing,  in  their  point  of  view. 

The  most  striking  example  of  the  non-English 
strain  is  to  be  found  in  the  series  of  Hibbert 
lectures,  originally  delivered  by  Professor  William 
James  in  Edinburgh.  He  enlarged  the  bounds 
of  psychology  in  a  way  to  make  the  Scotch  meta- 
physical writers  turn  in  their  graves.  He  brought 
into  the  study  of  processes  of  mind  and  spirit 
influences  hitherto  kept  completely  outside  of  it, 
telepathy  and  spooks  among  the  number.  As  to 
the  University  teaching,  once  mainly  British  in 
its  structural  lines,  the  revolt  against  that  began 
as  far  back  as  Emerson,  who  refused  to  take  his 
Bachelor's  degree  because  it  was  not  worth  the 
five  dollars  fee. 

The  capital  fact  of  my  observation  of  Americans 
as  a  body  politic  is  their  determination  to  prove 
all  things  for  themselves,  alike  in  good  and  ill, 
like  the  child  playing  at  the  fireside.  It  is  the 
first  real  example  in  history,  I  think,  in  spite  of  the 
Greeks.  Tammany  is,  or  was,  but  the  common 
man  wishing  he  could  get  the  same  chance  ;  and 
when  he  found  it  would  not  be  worth  having, 
harking  back,  like  another  child  of  Israel,  to  the 
moral  law.  I  wonder  if  there  is  any  other  way  of 
educating  ninety  millions  of  people. 


218  MY  HARVEST 

I  toy  with  this  fancy  in  one  of  my  books.  The 
world  has  never  seen  the  like  of  the  new  experi- 
ment. Ninety  millions  all  brought  up  to  do  as 
they  like,  in  a  very  riot  of  opportunity,  and  just 
as  free  to  go  to  the  place  unmentionable  to  ears 
polite,  as  to  satisfy  their  yearnings  for  better 
society.  The  old  countries  know  nothing  of  the 
temptation.  They  are  still  in  the  leading  strings 
of  superior  guidance,  and  content  to  regard  a 
thousand  years  as  but  a  day  of  their  pilgrimage. 
The  ninety  in  close  quarters  would  be  bad  enough, 
but  think  of  the  same  in  a  limitless  paradise  of 
climate,  soil,  wealth,  actual  and  potential,  beyond 
all  calculations  whatsoever. 

It  is  a  sheer  delirium  of  the  will,  a  second  Renas- 
cence of  the  evil,  as  well  as  the  good.  Their  bosses 
the  most  bloody,  bold  and  resolute  of  their  order 
in  all  history — colossal  exaggerations  of  Jonathan 
Wild  the  Great ;  their  very  train  robbers,  Turpins 
of  a  larger  mould  ;  their  gangs  of  corruption,  the 
most  ingenious  and  all-pervading ;  their  proletariat, 
with  Judge  Lynch  at  their  head,  the  most  fierce, 
pitiless  and  revengeful.  A  case  of  absolutes  all 
round,  happily  in  the  finer  things  as  well ;  and 
with  all  this,  a  democracy  on  its  way  to  the  light 
with  no  control  worth  talking  of  from  priest,  ruler, 
or  Old  Man  of  the  Sea.  They  have  accepted  the 
theory  of  the  good  and  the  evil  principle  in  per- 
petual tussle,  and  small  wonder  that  some  of 
them,  by  way  of  proving  all  things,  are  quite 
disposed  to  give  each  a  fair  trial.  They  may  still 
be  wrong,  but  it  is  certainly  not  for  Nature  to  cast 
the  first  stone.  She  sets  such  queer  examples. 


AMERICA  IN  FACT  AND  FANCY      219 

Is  not  her  whole  scheme  a  war  of  elements  ?  her 
fire  and  water  never  meeting  but  to  hiss  their 
mutual  hate. 

They  will  be  first  to  reach  the  light,  I  think, 
but  of  course  there  is  a  possibility  of  other  fortunes, 
which  at  times  sends  a  cold  shiver  through  one's 
frame.  They  must  win.  Democracy  has  to  vindi- 
cate itself  against  Kaiserdom,  or  what  will  become 
of  us  all ;  and  of  the  hosts  ultimately  marshalled 
for  that  effort  they  will  stand  in  the  van. 

Another  fancy,  this  of  pure  speculation,  will  keep 
me  in  delicious  uncertainty  for  ever.  Mr.  Zangwill 
and  others  have  shown  us  that  America  is  the 
melting  -  pot  of  the  races — what  will  the  final 
product  be  ?  They  will  have  to  be  poured  into 
some  sort  of  mould  to  cool  off — how  will  they 
come  out  ?  And,  once  again  as  I  have  said  else- 
where, the  real  American  man,  especially  as  the 
future  will  know  him,  is  not  yet  born.  The  ninety 
millions  soon  to  be  so  many  more,  from  all  the 
most  pushing  peoples  on  the  planet,  in  their  most 
pushing  examples,  have  yet  to  settle  down  into  a 
type.  What  a  process  in  racial  chemistry  !  who 
shall  forecast  the  result  ?  He  will  certainly  not 
be  English  any  more  than  the  Englishman  of 
to-day  is  Saxon,  Norman,  or  Dane.  At  best, 
it  can  only  be  English  as  a  blend  of  other  first- 
class  stocks  that  will  be  a  new  fact  of  creation. 
I  figure  him  in  my  fancies  as  one  with  the  alertness 
and  brilliancy  of  one  race,  the  passion  for  justice, 
principle,  rectitude  of  another,  and,  again,  with 
this  Puritan  cast  tempered  in  its  rigidity  by  the 
fire  of  his  sense  of  life.  Another  influence  still 


220  MY  HARVEST 

veins  him  like  marble  with  an  innate  courtesy 
and  a  fantastic  honour,  another  still  with  a 
thoroughness  that  lets  nothing  pass  without 
examination,  not  even  a  joke.  With  this  again, 
as  Nature's  own  secret  in  the  combination,  the 
emotion  of  colour,  the  sense  of  pulsation  that 
make  for  art,  poesy — beauty,  in  a  word,  as  the 
true  business.  And  then,  again  "  dogged  "  as  a 
solid  foundation  in  the  concrete  of  character  to 
keep  all  in  its  place,  and  to  remind  him  in  moments 
of  reverie  of  great-grandpapa. 

There  are  still  risks  of  a  far  different  result — 
one  of  them  perhaps  that  the  melting-pot  seems 
to  grow  more  exclusive  every  day. 

But  patience,  patience,  with  hope  and  faith.  It 
is  no  easy  matter  this  making  of  one  more  leading 
stock,  the  rarest  thing  in  all  the  history  of  man. 
The  number  has  never  yet  run  into  two  figures  or 
anything  like  it,  for  thousands  and  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  years  usually  go  to  any  operation  of  that 
kind.  Still  we  move  faster  now.  Hitherto  the 
Life  Force,  as  it  now  prefers  to  be  called,  has  been 
in  no  more  hurry  about  it  than  the  Chinese  are 
with  the  making  of  the  clay  for  their  pots  of  price. 
It  is  first  get  the  right  clay,  then  bury  it  for  a 
century  or  so  to  mature,  then — and  this  only  for 
the  first  stage.  Americans  of  course  would  like 
to  have  all  ready  for  next  Fall. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN 

"ITERANCE  was  now  in  rapid  recovery  after  the 
-L  war.  Such  changes  are  among  the  standing 
miracles  of  history.  You  see  a  state,  wellnigh  at 
its  last  gasp — devastated  cities,  ruined  railways 
and  bridges,  trade  and  industry  at  a  standstill ; 
and  then,  almost  with  the  ink  yet  wet  on  the 
treaty  of  peace,  a  sudden  spring  back  to  life  and 
work.  It  is  easily  explained.  Creation  is  still  the 
dominant  impulse  of  the  race,  destruction  takes 
but  a  second  place.  Only  thousands  destroy,  but 
millions  to  their  full  count  of  the  population  are 
interested  in  the  labours  of  restoration.  By  an 
irresistible  law  everyone  flies  to  his  store,  often 
from  secret  hoards,  to  stock  the  shop  and  the 
market.  Adam  delves  again,  Eve  spins,  the 
children  find  their  way  to  the  schoolhouse.  Every 
insect  of  the  swarm  brings  his  mite  to  the  reef, 
till  the  magician's  wand  sinks  to  the  level  of  a 
bauble  of  pantomime. 

The  new  France  came  into  being  under  conflict 
of  course,  but  of  conflict  within  the  bounds  of  law. 
Should  it  be  the  old  monarchical  France  in  a  fresh 
lease  of  life,  or  the  France  of  the  revolution, 
tempered  by  experience  and  by  suffering  into 
common  sense  ?  We  know  which  system  won, 

221 


222  MY  HARVEST 

and  which  has  proved  the  most  stable  of  all  the 
French  systems  of  a  century. 

Gambetta  struck  for  that  side,  and  as  its  leader. 
It  was  a  matter  of  will  and  of  temperament,  quite 
as  much  as  of  intellectual  pre-eminence.  He  was 
a  second  Bismarck  in  that  way — a  strong  animal 
nature,  a  bull  of  Bashan  of  politics.  He  ate  well, 
drank  well,  had  Rabelais  for  his  bedside  book. 
By  nature  a  governing  man,  he  took  on  the  airs 
of  state  as  one  to  the  manner  born.  To  get  access 
to  him,  you  had  to  "  make  antechamber "  as 
in  the  palaces  of  kings.  A  venerable  personage, 
who  wanted  only  a  staff  to  complete  his  equip- 
ment, ranged  the  suitors  for  place  or  preferment, 
according  rather  to  their  importance  than  to  the 
order  of  their  coming.  Sleek  young  fellows  of  good 
standing,  on  the  look  out  for  prefectures,  were 
of  the  number.  The  influences  were  entirely 
avowable  from  first  to  last,  but  of  course  devotion 
to  the  republic  was  the  supreme  test.  The  French 
do  all  things  methodically  :  these  aspirants  had  a 
good  understanding  among  themselves  to  prevent 
them  from  getting  in  each  other's  way.  All  this 
was  arranged  in  a  club  to  which  they  belonged — 
a  club  of  place-hunters,  it  might  have  been  called, 
though  in  no  disparaging  sense — where  they  sipped 
light  refreshments  and  contrived  to  make  their 
own  destinies  harmonize  with  those  of  their  country. 
So  I  once  found  them  engaged,  on  a  visit  to  the 
institution  under  the  guidance  of  a  friend. 

The  great  man,  I  believe,  had  the  same  hearty 
welcome  for  one  and  all  of  us.  It  was  certainly 
so  in  my  own  case,  and  naturally,  for  I  wanted 


FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN  223 

nothing  of  him  but  information  for  my  papers. 
When  all  were  dismissed  for  the  day,  you  might 
meet  him  in  the  Champs  Elysees  on  his  way  to 
dinner  with  the  elder  Coquelin,  the  actor,  his 
great  chum.  He  leaned  heavily  on  his  friend's 
arm,  for  he  was  premature  in  his  heaviness  of 
age.  Hats  were  raised  as  they  passed,  sometimes 
in  payment  of  a  double  debt  of  homage  to  both, 
though  Coquelin  of  course  had  the  tact  never  to 
raise  his  in  return. 

Jules  Simon,  another  member  of  the  governing 
group,  lacked  this  natural  bonhomie  of  his  chief, 
and  suffered  for  it  in  his  standing  with  the  crowd. 
He  was  a  man  of  the  study,  a  man  of  books,  and  as 
such  the  right  one  in  the  right  place,  as  the  great 
organizer  of  popular  education.  I  saw  traces  of  his 
handiwork,  years  after,  when  the  ship  of  war 
bearing  Admiral  Gervais  and  the  fortunes  of  France 
put  into  port  at  Bergen  on  her  way  to  Petrograd. 
Her  voyage  was  the  first  public  sign  and  token 
of  the  coming  alliance.  I  went  aboard ;  and 
between  decks,  found  the  Catholic  chaplain  putting 
the  conscripts  through  their  three  R's,  lest  even 
the  Breton  peasant,  fresh  from  his  flocks  and  herds, 
should  escape.  Jules  Ferry,  as  minister,  carried 
on  the  same  good  work.  When  it  was  done,  the 
old  Sorbonne  of  Paris  became  what  it  is  to-day,  a 
generating  station  of  intellectual  light  for  the  whole 
nation,  and  virtually  without  cost  to  the  consumer. 

With  the  same  thoroughness,  Rouvier  organized 
French  finance.  He  was  a  dark  meridional,  with 
a  genius  for  figures,  and  something  more — large 
views.  He  could  think  in  millions.  Here  again 


224  MY  HARVEST 

you  had  the  personal  note,  as  one  of  the  secrets  of 
popularity  :  Rouvier,  like  his  party  chief,  loved 
good  cheer.  He  was  suitably  mated  with  a  woman 
who  could  shine  by  herself  without  any  reflected 
light,  even  from  him.  She  was  the  famous  Claude 
Vignon,  of  a  pen  name,  writer,  artist,  and  between 
whiles  one  of  the  best  cooks  in  Paris.  Her  intel- 
lectual hold  on  him  was  strengthened,  with  or 
without  need,  by  her  amazing  dinners,  which  on 
Sundays,  as  a  holiday  task,  she  cooked  all  by 
herself.  It  was  heroic,  for  she  had  still  to  take 
due  care  of  her  good  looks. 

As  a  girl  she  was  the  sculptor  of  the  day,  and 
men  with  long  memories  could  tell  you  of  a  bust 
from  her  chisel  that  was  the  sensation  of  the  salon 
of  1853.  She  studied  under  Pradier,  and  was 
employed  through  his  interest  on  great  public 
works  ;  the  cupids  playing  round  the  fountains 
in  the  square  Montholon  were  by  her  hand.  She 
had  fashioned  successfully  a  notable  Bacchus, 
and  a  notable  bust  of  Thiers — of  course  not  as  boon 
companions.  In  later  life  she  took  the  political 
correspondence  of  the  Independance  Beige,  at 
present  time  of  writing  published  in  London  as 
one  of  the  incidents  of  the  German  invasion ! 
In  my  time  she  was  to  be  seen  in  the  Press  gallery 
of  the  Chamber  at  work  on  her  despatch  for  the 
night's  post,  and  this  eventually  brought  her  into 
contact  with  Rouvier,  as  member  for  Marseilles. 
He  began  by  successfully  managing  a  large  house 
of  business,  and  ended  as  the  almost  indispensable 
Minister  of  Finance  of  every  republican  government. 

Clemenceau,  while  of  that  party,  fought  for  his 


FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN  225 

own  hand  against  its  leaders.  He  continued  that 
practice  till  he  became  a  minister  himself,  when  he 
was  repaid  in  kind.  I  think  it  was  more  a  matter  of 
sporting  taste  than  anything  else.  He  was  a  born 
fighter  :  you  had  only  to  look  at  him  to  see  that. 
The  close-cropped  hair  gave  the  suggestion,  the 
eyes,  in  their  hollows  made  by  the  high  cheek 
bones,  gave  the  certainty.  The  death  mask  of 
Napoleon  tells  just  the  same  tale.  He  was  still  most 
useful  in  holding  a  brief  for  the  Radicals  in  a 
republic  of  moderates.  H^'s  electoral  meetings  were 
invariably  interesting  as  drama — in  the  struggle 
over  the  election  of  the  bureau,  the  give  and  take 
of  dialectic  between  the  member  and  the  crowd. 

Rochefort  was  against  them  all.  There  was  the 
slipperiness  of  the  eel  in  his  composition,  the 
venom  of  the  snake,  and  every  one  by  turns  felt 
the  smart  of  his  poison,  if  not  the  death  stroke. 
He  had  egged  on  the  Commune  to  its  mad  venture  ; 
and  as  the  Versaillese  troops  came  into  Paris,  he 
naturally  went  out.  He  was  caught  at  Meaux, 
artistically  made  up  for  flight.  In  this  extremity 
he  made  no  scruple  of  begging  for  his  life  from 
the  men  he  had  done  nothing  but  revile.  Trochu 
was  one  of  them,  Gambetta,  to  whom  he  wrote  a 
letter  of  suppliance,  another.  The  latter  got  the 
death  sentence  commuted  into  one  of  transporta- 
tion. Years  afterwards,  when  the  suppliant, 
amnested  and  in  full  favour  as  the  idol  of  the 
Parisian  mob,  renewed  the  attacks,  he  was  publicly 
reminded  of  the  obligation.  He  flatly  denied  it. 
Gambetta  produced  the  letter.  The  other  was 
equal  to  the  occasion  :  he  confessed  to  the  hand- 


226  MY  HARVEST 

writing,  while  still  denying  the  appeal.  He  vaguely 
remembered,  he  said,  having  written  something 
at  the  dictation  of  his  advocate  (no  longer  living 
to  affirm  or  deny),  but  he  had  a  clear  recollection 
of  having  forbidden  his  friend  to  forward  it. 
This  served  with  his  worshippers,  and  he  went  on 
spitting  venom  to  the  last,  in  the  full  enjoyment  of 
what  are  called  the  good  things  of  life.  His  word 
was  unquestionable  only  when  it  came  to  pictures 
and  bric-a-brac,  of  which  he  was  quite  a  good  judge. 

He  began  life  as  a  government  clerk,  when 
Villemessant  lured  him  to  the  Figaro  with  a 
splendid  salary.  It  was  the  policy  of  the  paper — 
to  discover  a  new  genius  every  quarter,  work  him 
to  the  very  death  of  his  vogue,  and  then  scrap  him 
for  another.  Rochefort  was  shrewd  enough  to 
dismiss  himself  in  time.  Foresight  is  better  than 
repentance  : — "  What  a  goose  I've  been  !  ''  were 
probably  the  last  words  of  the  one  that  laid  the 
golden  eggs. 

Louise  Michel,  another  figure  of  the  Commune, 
was  of  quite  a  different  stamp — Anarchist  and 
angel  of  pity  in  one.  She  derived  from  Rousseau 
— men  were  all  good  if  only  institutions  would  be 
so  kind  as  to  leave  them  alone — and  she  was 
simply  incorrigible  in  her  love  and  tenderness 
towards  all  sentient  things.  In  her  prison  cell,  she 
made  friends  with  the  rats  and  often  asked  them  to 
dinner.  Left  to  themselves,  she  found,  they  were 
far  better  than  her  own  kind,  and  particularly  in 
their  care  for  their  aged  and  infirm.  On  her  way  to 
New  Caledonia,  caged  in  a  deck-house  of  steel  with 
the  other  prisoners  who  took  the  air,  she  cheered 


FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN  227 

her  weaker  comrades,  though  she  had  little  to  give 
them  but  a  smile.  As  I  knew  her,  when  she  came 
back  under  amnesty,  she  was  thin,  angular,  with 
the  long  face  of  Flemish  sainthood,  and  far  beyond 
her  prime.  She  had  started  in  life  as  a  school- 
mistress at  Montmartre,  but  the  insurrection  soon 
claimed  her  for  its  own.  She  fought  to  the  last,  and 
surrendered  only  to  secure  her  mother's  safety. 
She  defied  her  judges  and  the  very  government 
that  offered  clemency,  refusing  even  to  leave  New 
Caledonia,  till  less  culpable  comrades  had  been 
set  free.  Twenty  thousand  people  turned  out  to 
meet  her  at  St.  Lazare. 

I  took  care  to  be  at  her  first  public  meeting. 
There  was  no  applause,  even  when  she  rose.  The 
tall  figure  mounted  the  platform,  advanced  to  the 
front  and  without  a  preliminary  Mesdames  et 
Messieurs  plunged  at  once  into  an  address.  It 
was  one  of  the  most  effective  I  ever  heard,  just 
because  it  was  devoid  of  all  the  arts  of  oratory. 
It  gave  the  impression  of  an  earnest  woman  who 
had  simply  left  her  fireside  to  speak  on  a  public 
topic  of  importance.  When  she  had  done,  you 
felt  she  would  go  home  again,  and  become  a  very 
private  citizen  till  the  next  meeting.  There  was 
not  the  slightest  suggestion  of  the  professional 
orator  in  the  gesture,  and  scarcely  any  in  the 
modulations.  But  the  address  told  by  a  sort  of  rapt 
mysticism  of  manner,  as  though  the  speaker  were 
making  herself  the  mere  mouthpiece  of  her  Voices. 
The  secret  of  its  effect  was  in  the  perfect  contrast 
between  the  manner  and  the  matter,  the  latter, 
on  this  occasion,  a  fierce  denunciation  of  the 


228  MY  HARVEST 

capitalists,  that  did  not  shrink  from  the  terrible 
issue  of  civil  war. 

She  declined  a  public  banquet  on  her  return, 
and  started  at  once  for  her  mother's  village. 
The  old  lady  had  no  share  in  the  daughter's 
opinions,  and  indeed  no  sense  of  them.  Her  sole 
wish  was  for  a  quiet  life  for  both.  Later  on  I  found 
her  tucked  up  in  bed  in  a  Paris  flat  and  quite  well 
enough  to  be  as  troublesome  as  a  healthy  baby. 
When  the  talk  turned  to  politics,  Louise  motioned 
me  into  the  next  room,  while  still  leaving  the  door 
ajar  lest  anything  should  go  wrong  with  her  charge. 
Something  did  go  wrong  very  soon,  when  a  lusty 
cry  came  from  the  invalid  : 

"  Who  is  this  gentleman,  dear  ?  ': 

"  Oh,  a  friend,  mother,  only  a  friend." 

"  What  does  he  want  ?  " 

"  Just  a  little  matter  of  business." 

"  How  do  you  know  he  is  not  a  policeman  ?  ': 

"  But  he  is  not,  mother ;  and  if  he  were " 

A  pause  ;   then  : 

"  Louise ! " 

"  Yes,  little  mother." 

"  Ask  him  if  he's  a  policeman,  before  you  say 
another  word." 

"  Don't  fidget,  mother  dear  !  " 

How  different  the  other  type  of  anarchist, 
Ravachol.  To  think  that  such  a  woman  should 
ever  have  lived  in  the  same  hemisphere,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  same  party,  with  him !  He  was  of  a 
type  common  enough  in  French  criminality,  robber 
and  murderer  first,  but  still  with  a  political  theory 
for  the  pose.  He  cut  throats  for  a  living,  gave 


FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN  229 

some  of  the  proceeds  to  the  poor,  and  spent  the 
rest  in  suppers  to  celebrate  the  extermination  of  a 
bourgeois.  We,  it  may  be  observed,  know  nothing 
of  this  type.  Bill  Sikes  is  after  the  swag  and  no 
more,  and  never  professes  the  slightest  regard  for 
the  proletariat,  if  only  from  ignorance  of  the 
word.  Ravachol's  favourite  plan  was  to  enter  a 
village  shop  kept  by  some  thrifty  old  recluse,  male 
or  female,  brain  the  occupant,  and  rifle  the  hoard. 
At  other  times,  he  kept  an  eye  on  the  graveyards  ; 
and  where  he  heard  of  a  recent  funeral  in  which 
trinkets  had  been  buried  with  the  corpse,  he  dug 
down  to  it  at  dead  of  night,  and  groped  for  the 
prize.  He  was  the  prince,  not  to  say  the  demigod, 
of  the  murderous  Apaches  who  unite  crime  and 
party  feeling  in  their  profession  of  faith,  and  are 
heard  of  in  Paris,  and  what  is  worse  sometimes 
met,  to  this  day.  He  was  caught,  by  an  onslaught 
of  the  police  on  his  favourite  cafe — but  the  place 
was  blown  up  by  his  band  as  a  punishment  for 
supposed  treachery  on  the  part  of  the  proprietor. 
His  visit,  under  a  strong  guard,  to  the  Concier- 
gerie  was  a  Parisian  event  of  the  day.  The 
criminal  suspects  are  taken  there  immediately 
after  arrest  to  be  photographed,  full  face  and 
profile,  and  measured  on  the  system  invented  by 
M.  Bertillon,  and  now  supplemented  by  the  sign 
manual  of  the  finger-tips,  on  the  Galton  plan. 
The  first  gives  the  bone  measurements  which,  as 
distinct  from  the  fleshy  ones  known  to  the  tailors, 
are  supposed  never  to  vary.  The  two  together, 
with  their  hundreds  of  thousands  of  entries,  form 
a  collection  at  which  the  Recording  Angel  himself 


230  MY  HARVEST 

might  not  disdain  a  glance.  The  excitement  of  this 
distinguished  presence  extended  from  his  fellow 
criminals  to  the  officials  and  even  to  the  guards. 
They  crowded  round  him,  heedless  of  all  else, 
with  the  exception  of  one  prisoner  who  kept  his 
head,  and  escaped  by  walking  downstairs  into  the 
street. 

Their  hero  found  his  way  in  due  course  to  the 
guillotine,  dancing  the  Carmagnole  as  he  went,  and 
singing  the  accompaniment,  though,  as  hyper- 
critical performers  here  and  there  objected,  with 
a  rather  faltering  voice.  While  he  lay  waiting 
for  death,  a  lady  well  known  in  society  found  means 
to  enter  the  courtyard  and  to  offer  him  a  bouquet 
through  his  prison  bars.  She  afterwards  gave  me 
the  particulars  with  great  gusto,  and  made  much 
of  a  photograph  received  in  exchange  for  the  flowers. 

It  was  inscribed  :  "To  Madam  :  homage 

from  one  of  the  vanquished  :  Koenigstein  Rava- 
chol."  Of  other  portraits,  also  in  her  unique 
collection,  one  represented  him  in  a  tattered  and 
torn  condition,  immediately  after  his  arrest,  with 
crumpled  hair,  and  shirt  collar  torn  all  to  pieces 
in  the  frightful  struggle  with  his  captors.  Then 
again  he  figured  as  a  dandy  of  the  outer  boulevards, 
frock  coat,  topper,  and  other  masterpieces  of  the 
ready-made  school.  He  reeked  of  the  well-known 
vanity  of  criminals,  and  had  some  excuse  for  it  in 
a  rather  striking  face. 

The  Panama  scandal  is  hardly  to  be  ignored  in 
any  study  of  the  forces  then  shaping,  for  good  or 
ill,  the  life  of  France.  No  doubt  the  French  scheme 
for  cutting  the  isthmus  was  largely  ruined  by 


FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN  231 

corruption,  and  in  particular  by  the  necessity  of 
squaring  the  Press.  But  many  were  in  it,  from  the 
distinguished  senator  who  had  to  fly  to  England 
when  the  cat  came  out  of  the  bag,  to  the  Radical 
deputy  who  tearfully  owned  to  the  bribe  as  but 
the  wherewithal  for  his  daughter's  dot.  M.  de 
Lesseps,  to  his  credit,  at  first  declined  to  spend  a 
penny  for  puffery,  only  to  find  his  mistake  when 
his  first  appeal  for  funds  became  a  dead  letter 
owing  to  the  frigid  silence  of  the  papers  or  their 
open  hostility.  It  fell  quite  flat  with  the  small 
investors,  not  forgetting  the  maid-of-all-work  in 
the  kitchen,  whose  hoardings  are  the  mainstay 
of  French  finance.  They  save  like  heroes,  and 
speculate  like  children ;  it  is  astonishing  what 
kind  of  inducements,  in  their  very  triviality  gross 
as  a  mountain,  open,  palpable,  charm  the  money 
out  of  their  pockets. 

I  once  made  a  small  collection  of  these  for  my 
own  amusement.  One  journal  asked  a  hundred 
thousand  francs  for  its  support,  and  I  believe  got 
it.  At  any  rate,  when  the  Company,  sadly  wiser, 
issued  their  second  appeal,  with  the  remittance 
for  secret  service,  the  result  almost  exceeded 
expectation. 

You  could  not  take  up  a  paper  without  finding 
something  of  this  sort :  "  It  is  near  four  centuries 
since  Columbus  died,  yet  his  name  has  lost  nothing 
of  its  splendour.  The  same  splendour,  the  same 
popularity,  universal  and  eternal,  to-day  attend 
the  name  of  Ferdinand  de  Lesseps." 

Or  again.  "  A  Paris  Cry.  People  think  of 
nothing  but  Panama  and  of  M.  de  Lesseps.  Go 


232  MY  HARVEST 

where  you  will,  to  the  theatre,  the  restaurant, 
the  confectioner's,  the  dressmaker's ;  into  ante- 
chambers, porters'  lodges,  drawing-rooms,  clubs ;  in 
the  streets,  omnibuses,  railway  stations — Panama  ! 
— always  Panama  !  Attend  a  funeral,  a  marriage, 
or  a  trial — Panama !  Meet  friend  or  stranger,  still 
Panama  !  " 

"  The  Question  of  the  Day. 

"  c  If  you  were  very  nice,  do  you  know  what  you 
would  do  ?  ' 

"  '  What,  my  angel  ?  ' 

" '  Why,  you  would  give  me  some  shares  in 
Panama  for  my  New  Year.' 

"  And  observe  this  is  not  a  wearisome  cry  which 
one  tries  to  forget  like  a  street  chorus,  no,  not  at 
all.  These  three  syllables,  short,  sharp,  striking, 
do  not  grate  on  the  ear.  They  sound  joyously  with 
the  merry  clink  of  gold. 

"  Panama  is  the  question  of  the  day,  and  in  a 
little  while  will  become  the  question  of  the  century, 
so  I,  who  am  no  financier,  have  to  do  as  all  the 
world  does,  and  think  in  Panama.  The  day 
before  yesterday  the  comedian  Talbot  took  his 
benefit.  He  is  not  in  the  habit  of  burying  his  gold 
in  his  garden,  like  Harpagon,  the  character  he  had 
just  played,  so  he  pocketed  his  savings  for  the 
night  with  a  '  here  goes  for  Panama.' 

"  '  Well,  boys,'  said  young  A.  yesterday,  at  the 
club,  as  he  fobbed  a  handsome  sum  from  the  green 
table,  '  all  this,  as  the  song  says,  is 

For  Panama 
For  Panama 
Ah  !  ah  !  ah  !  ' 


FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN  233 

"  One  of  my  fellow  contributors  on  this  journal 
who  has  come  into  a  fortune  of  200,000  francs,  is 
at  this  very  moment  bawling  in  my  ear,  '  Oh, 
won't  I  just  have  a  flutter  in  Panama  !  '  Why, 
my  very  valet  this  morning  left  me  half  dressed 
to  talk  Panama.  Even  the  worthy  people,  whose 
bank  is  their  long  stocking,  are  turning  it  inside 
out  for  M.  de  Lesseps.  '  Take  it,'  they  say,  '  take 
everything ;  pierce  your  Isthmus  and  win  us  a 
fortune.'  You  see  they've  confidence  in  him  : 
parbleu  !  who  would  not,  after  what  he  has  done  ?  " 

This  was  the  puff  rattle-pate.  Now  for  the  puff 
serious  :  "  America,  uneasy  on  the  score  of  her 
prerogatives,  opposed  the  project,  and  this  was 
not  without  its  effect  on  some  of  our  fellow  citizens. 
Their  ingratitude,  however,  did  not  weary  the  man 
who  had  conquered  the  Isthmus  of  Suez.  An 
apostle  of  progress,  strong  in  the  truth  within  him, 
this  young  man  and  old  pilgrim  of  civilization  set 
out  with  his  wonted  ardour  to  bring  light  to  the 
spirits  that  walked  in  darkness.  He  had  hardly 
appeared  before  every  doubt,  every  difficulty, 
vanished.  The  shrewd  Yankees,  convinced  that 
they  had  no  longer  to  fear  European  intervention, 
and  assured  of  the  neutralization  of  the  canal, 
are  now  his  allies,  and  are  participating  largely 
in  the  new  enterprise.  The  subscription  is  hardly 
announced,  yet  demands  are  coming  from  every 
part  of  the  globe.  The  financiers  remember^that 
the  original  Suez  shares,  issued  at  4000  francs,  are 
now  worth  40,000 ;  no  wonder,  then,  that  Americans, 
English,  Germans,  French,  are  disputing  the  honour 
of  joining  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific." 


234  MY  HARVEST 

The  very  political  spies  were  in  it,  and  turned 
to  it  as  a  new  branch  of  their  trade.  They  are  a 
great  social  force  in  their  way.  We  have  seen,  by 
fairly  recent  revelations,  how  often  they  stand 
between  the  capable  military  officer  and  his  pro- 
motion, when  his  political  sympathies  happen  to 
be  of  the  wrong  sort. 

I  knew  of  one  who  died  in  a  sort  of  odour  of 
social  sanctity,  in  the  sense  of  never  getting  found 
out.  She  was  the  daughter  of  a  railway  clerk  at 
Lyons,  and  she  married  an  officer  of  the  garrison, 
well  connected  though  just  as  poor  as  herself. 
They  had  a  hard  struggle  to  live  on  his  pay, 
especially  as  they  were  obliged  to  keep  up  appear- 
ances. There  was,  however,  one  compensation 
for  her ;  the  marriage  eventually  took  her  into  a 
higher  circle  and  made  her  acquainted  with  its 
ways.  At  first,  though,  she  had  her  difficulties. 
Lyons,  knowing  her  origin,  was  rather  shy  of  the 
acquaintance ;  but  when  she  accompanied  her 
husband  to  Paris  she  had  a  better  chance,  and 
with  her  really  winning  manners,  she  turned  it  to 
the  best  account.  They  wanted  nothing  but  a 
little  more  money  to  make  them  happy,  when  he 
was  ordered  to  Italy,  only  to  get  killed  at  Solferino, 
and  to  leave  her,  happily  without  children,  but 
with  no  other  resource  than  her  widow's  allowance 
from  the  State.  She  applied  for  further  assistance, 
but  having  no  interest  (his  relatives  had  never 
taken  the  slightest  notice  of  her)  the  minister  was 
obliged  to  inform  her  that  he  had  nothing  at  his 
disposal.  What  was  she  to  do  ?  She  had  acquired 
a  taste  for  the  pleasures  of  the  capital,  and  to  go 


FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN  235 

back  to  Lyons  and  social  obscurity  was  out  of  the 
question. 

The  spy  service  was  her  happy  thought.  She 
did  not  know  that  spies  are  rarely  engaged  for 
the  higher  work  until  they  have  shown  their  mettle, 
and  that  the  list  in  waiting  is  a  long  one.  She 
wrote  to  the  Prefecture  to  offer  her  services,  and 
she  had  to  wait  five  days  for  a  "  declined  with 
thanks."  But  it  occurred  to  her  that  the  best  way 
to  find  a  market  might  be  to  show  a  sample.  She 
knew  something  of  the  Faubourg  St.  Germain, 
as  well  as  of  the  quarter  of  the  Champs  Elysees  ; 
and  she  soon  learned  what  was  going  on  among 
declared  enemies  and  pretended  friends  of  the 
Second  Empire.  Chance  favoured  her ;  a  small 
knot  of  adventurers,  like  herself  in  want  of  money, 
were  actually  getting  up  a  false  plot  against  the 
government — a  plot  that  like  the  Sheffield  razor 
of  the  story,  was  simply  meant  to  sell.  They  had 
found  a  few  dupes  among  the  work-people  of  the 
Faubourg  St.  Antoine,  and,  altogether  taken  in  by 
our  heroine,  they  were  about  to  turn  her  to  some 
account,  when  she  forestalled  the  compliment  at 
their  expense.  She  wrote  to  the  Prefecture  again, 
though  not  in  her  own  name,  and  this  time  the 
communication  was  acknowledged  by  an  official 
in  person,  who  came  to  tell  her  that  she  might 
continue  her  interesting  observations.  She  did 
so,  and  with  such  effect  that  when  the  manufac- 
turers of  the  plot  reached  the  office  with  their 
tardy  disclosures  they  were  shown  to  the  door. 
With  that  she  was  immediately  engaged. 

They  gave  her  3000  francs  a  year  to  start  with, 


236  MY  HARVEST 

and  a  promise  of  a  rise,  so  she  now  did  pretty 
well,  and  began  to  save  for  her  old  age.  Her 
heaviest  expense  was  the  weekly  reception  which 
she  was  obliged  to  give  to  keep  her  place  in  the 
world.  It  was  hard  work  :  intimacy  with  fifty 
innocent  families  to  have  the  chance  of  watching 
five  who  were  going  wrong.  After  a  while  the 
Government  began  to  grow  uneasy  under  the 
imminent  failure  of  the  Mexican  expedition,  and 
there  were  rumours,  even  at  this  early  period,  of 
an  attempt  at  a  Legitimist  restoration.  She  found 
out  that  it  was  no  more  than  the  dream  of  a  few 
enthusiasts,  and  that  the  person  to  be  restored  had 
no  knowledge  of  the  matter.  It  was  an  immense 
relief  to  the  Emperor  ;  he  sent  word  that  she  was 
to  be  looked  after,  and  they  raised  her  to  9000 
francs  at  a  bound.  They  thought  of  employing 
her  in  Germany,  but  unfortunately  she  knew 
nothing  of  the  language. 

Her  employers  had  perfect  confidence  in  her 
because  she  had  no  confidence  in  them.  She  never 
once  signed  her  own  name  to  a  receipt  or  a  report. 
They  remonstrated,  but  she  was  inflexible,  and 
they  had  to  put  up  with  a  sort  of  nom  de  plume, 
Lena.  She  never  went  to  the  Prefecture ;  when  she 
had  anything  to  say  that  could  not  be  written  she 
summoned  an  agent  to  her  house.  She  knew  more 
than  she  told  them ;  the  Empire  might  not  last,  and 
it  would  be  a  pretty  thing  to  have  her  correspond- 
ence turned  over  by  the  minister  of  a  rival  system. 
When  it  fell,  and  the  men  of  the  4th  September  had 
the  rummaging  of  the  archives,  her  letters  became 
the  talk  of  Paris,  and  her  signature  its  mystery. 


FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN  237 

She  went  to  the  new  incumbent  one  day,  put 
her  identity  to  him  as  a  riddle,  solved  it  for  him 
when  he  gave  it  up,  and  asked  him  if  she  should 
go  on  as  before.  He  could  give  but  one  reply,  for 
the  spy  service  survives  governments.  She  was 
kept  on,  even  after  the  fall  of  M.  Thiers,  and  she 
made  herself  useful  to  the  Marshal's  government 
by  tracking  a  German  colleague  of  her  own  sex, 
who  had  worked  herself  into  the  confidence  of 
General  de  Cissey,  then  Minister  of  War.  This 
fair  "  curious  impertinent "  was  finding  out  all 
sorts  of  things  about  the  new  organizations  of  the 
army,  when  her  industry  was  interrupted  by  the 
abrupt  dismissal  of  the  General  from  his  post,  and 
by  an  order  to  herself  to  leave  Paris  by  the  night 
train. 

Lena  died  in  harness — of  a  cold  caught  at  a 
soiree ;  and  of  the  one  or  two  hundred  persons 
who  attended  the  funeral,  probably  not  more  than 
a  couple  knew  that  she  was  anything  more  than  an 
officer's  widow  who  had  lived  on  her  means. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
PEOPLE  AND  THINGS 

fTlHE  French  politicians  were  not  to  have  the 
-I-  work  of  reconstruction  all  to  themselves  ;  the 
ideologists  bore  a  hand  in  it,  and  there  was  many 
a  tug  of  war  between  the  old  faiths  and  the  new. 
This  was  especially  the  case  in  art.  The  academical 
tradition,  as  represented  by  Gerome,  Cabanel, 
Bouguereau,  Lefebvre,  and  even  Meissonier,  was 
at  odds  with  a  naturalism  still  in  its  period  of 
riot.  Manet  and  even  Courbet  had  led  the  way  of 
innovation,  Bastien-Lepage  followed,  Degas  was 
perhaps  the  greatest  force  of  the  school,  with 
his  marvellous  work  in  the  rendering  of  movement. 
He  never  lacked  disciples  and  even  devotees,  but 
he  had  often  to  wait  for  buyers.  One  day  Gerome 
dropped  in  to  look  at  the  new  work,  though  with 
his  laboured  studies  of  statuesque  form  he  was 
hardly  in  a  position  to  enjoy  it.  But  his  Eastern 
sketches  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Seraglio  Point, 
and  his  spoils  of  the  bazaars  held  the  market,  so,  in 
the  circumstances,  the  visit  was  something  of  an 
act  of  condescension.  Degas  waited  in  vain  for  a 
word  of  praise.  At  length  he  could  stand  it  no 
longer,  and  a  surly  "  Hein  !  I  suppose  it's  not 
Turk  enough  for  you,"  brought  the  visit  to  a  close. 
A  greater  than  either,  Rodin,  was  still  looking 

238 


PEOPLE  AND  THINGS  239 

for  full  recognition.  The  majority  of  collectors, 
who  wait  for  the  fact  of  fame  rather  than  the 
promise,  were  still  to  seek.  I  once  had  the  honour 
of  breakfasting  with  him,  and  I  remember  my  host 
as  a  square-set  figure  in  a  sort  of  Sunday  suit  of 
ill-fitting  black,  of  which  it  may  be  enough  to  say 
that  it  carried  out  none  of  his  subsequent  theories 
of  the  function  of  drapery.  I  was  not  qualified  for 
prophecy  of  his  future  greatness,  but  I  came  away 
with  the  impression  that  I  had  met  a  man  quite 
out  of  the  common  ;  and  when  I  afterwards  saw 
his  John  the  Baptist,  I  began  faintly  to  divine 
what  was  coming  to  pass.  I  had  yet  to  wait  for 
long  years  to  see  one  glorious  fulfilment  in  literature 
— his  volume  on  the  cathedrals  of  France.  Reims, 
Laon,  Soissons,  Beauvais,  in  their  great  sequence 
of  schools  and  inspiration — alas,  what  is  left  of 
one  of  them  now  !  It  is  a  book  on  a  subject  greater 
even  than  art,  the  soul  of  a  race  :  "  I  am  an  artist 
and  a  plebeian,  and  the  cathedrals  were  built  by 
the  artists  for  the  people." 

Gustave  Dore  was  another  of  the  interesting 
figures  of  the  time,  as  one  of  its  greatest  illus- 
trators, but  he  made  a  serious  mistake  in  trying, 
on  imperfect  training,  and  more  serious  defects 
of  nature,  to  rank  as  a  painter.  The  academical 
school  would  not  have  him  at  any  price  in  this 
character.  His  sense  of  colour  was  almost  non- 
existent— his  giant  pictures  seemed  to  cumber  the 
wall  at  the  annual  shows.  It  was  much  the  same 
with  his  sense  of  character,  his  figures  seemed  all  of 
one  family.  Racially,  if  not  morally,  he  exagger- 
ated the  note  of  the  brotherhood  of  man.  He 


240  MY  HARVEST 

worked  desperately  hard  for  the  revision  of  the 
critical  sentence,  but  towards  the  last,  one  cannot 
but  fear,  with  the  certainty  that  he  was  working 
in  vain.  This  led  to  moods  of  depression,  induced 
by  the  very  buoyancy  of  nature  that  made  him 
keenly  alive  to  the  agony  of  disappointment. 

He  was  seen  at  his  happiest  and  best  at  his 
Sunday-at-homes  in  the  old  house  in  the  Faubourg 
St.  Germain.  A  few  people  came  to  a  simple 
dinner,  and  this  was  followed  by  a  reception  on 
the  same  scale.  The  aged  mother  took  her  place 
at  the  head  of  the  table,  with  children  to  the  right 
and  grandchildren  to  the  left.  Gustave  was  the 
youngest  son,  and  the  only  one  unmarried,  but  he 
held  the  other  place  of  honour  as  a  member  of  her 
household.  He  was  still  the  gamin  of  the  family, 
full  of  wild  animal  spirits,  which  often  found  vent  in 
mischief,  and  incurred  parental  rebuke — "  my  boy ! 
my  boy  !  don't  make  such  a  noise."  It  pleased 
the  old  lady  to  forget  that,  since  she  first  talked 
to  him  in  that  way,  he  had  become  one  of  the  best 
known  men  in  France,  and  it  pleased  him  even 
more  to  have  it  forgotten. 

They  took  their  coffee  in  a  sort  of  domestic 
studio  built  in  the  courtyard.  Here,  at  one  step, 
you  passed  from  Paris  to  Bohemia,  though  not 
exactly  to  those  semi-savage  recesses  of  the  country 
that  poor  Miirger  explored.  The  light  from  the 
ceiling  fell  on  the  strangest  medley  of  picturesque 
disorder  ever  seen  under  an  artist's  roof.  This 
was  the  room  in  which  Dore  drew — he  painted 
elsewhere — and  the  great  central  table  was  heaped 
up  with  his  sketches  on  paper  or  on  the  block, 


PEOPLE  AND  THINGS  241 

and  with  costly  volumes  of  illustration  already 
published.  Scenes  of  the  life  of  all  countries  and 
of  all  ages  were  here  before  you  in  dazzling  pro- 
fusion. By  and  by  the  old  servant,  Pierre,  came 
in  with  light  refreshments,  which  one  could  hardly 
refuse  without  giving  him  pain.  The  guests,  he 
seemed  to  think,  were  as  much  his  as  his  master's, 
and  he  accordingly  pushed  his  tray  among  them 
after  the  fashion  of  that  bygone  time  to  which  he 
so  decidedly  belonged.  He  was  useful  in  more  ways 
than  one,  for  Dore  unconsciously  took  him  as  a 
model  when  he  wanted  a  long  and  somewhat 
mournfully  serious  visage,  though  neither  the 
artist  nor  his  victim  seemed  to  have  the  slightest 
idea  of  the  fact.  Pierre  would  turn  over  dozens 
of  sketches  in  which  he  appeared  as  a  praying 
Crusader,  a  love-lorn  Spaniard,  or  a  thoughtful 
Jew,  without  once  recognizing  himself  in  his  new 
and  fanciful  surroundings.  The  other  had  simply 
mistaken  memory  for  imagination  in  this  part  of 
his  work.  Munkacsy,  the  Hungarian  painter,  was 
often  of  the  party.  Another  familiar  figure  was 
the  little  old  lady  who  translated  the  English  texts 
of  the  subjects  for  illustration,  and  helped  Dore" 
with  his  correspondence. 

He  was  as  frolicsome  as  a  child.  At  one  moment 
he  jumped  on  a  chair  and  played  the  fiddle  ;  and 
here  it  was  interesting  to  note  how  his  love  of 
music — he  was  no  mean  performer — gradually 
got  the  better  of  his  mere  sense  of  fun,  and  made 
him  earnest  in  spite  of  himself.  He  began  for  an 
antic  ;  he  went  on  to  execute  some  difficult  passage 
of  Rossini,  his  favourite  composer,  with  almost 


242  MY  HARVEST 

the  strength,  the  delicacy  and  the  certainty  of 
touch  of  a  soloist  at  the  opera.  What  would  he 
do  next  ?  No  one  could  tell,  himself  least  of  all. 
As  it  turned  out,  perhaps,  he  was  going  to  sing. 
He  gave  no  warning — not  a  cough  was  heard ; 
but  just  started  from  the  place  where  he  happened 
to  be  when  the  fancy  came  into  his  head.  You 
might  listen  or  not,  as  you  liked  :  he  was  not 
singing  to  please  you,  but  himself,  and  the  room 
was  almost  big  enough  to  allow  you  to  strike  up 
on  your  own  account  in  another  corner.  Sometimes 
it  was  a  quaint  rigmarole  on  the  theme  of  "  a  plain 
woman  for  my  taste  "  : — 

For  beauty  'tis  a  thing  that  passes, 
But  plainness  lasts  for  evermore. 

"Didn't  I  tell  you,"  says  the  mother,  "that 
he's  only  a  great  boy  ?  " 

It  was  good  going  while  it  lasted  :  "all  shall 
die." 

There  came  a  time  when  he  took  to  his  bed  in  a 
fit  of  melancholy,  due  to  the  lack  of  both  official 
and  critical  appreciation.  The  mother  felt  that 
it  was  time  for  strong  measures,  and  she  went 
straight  to  the  Minister  of  Fine  Arts,  and  told  him 
that  her  boy  was  dying  for  want  of  the  Cross  of 
the  Legion  of  Honour.  The  Cross  was  given,  and 
he  recovered  at  once.  For  all  that,  I  think,  it  was 
sheer  heartbreak  that  so  prematurely  laid  him 
low. 

There  was  a  welter  of  new  schools  in  literature, 
but  hardly  one  out  of  which  any  living  soul  could 


PEOPLE  AND  THINGS  243 

find  a  use,  till  Barres  and  Bazin  settled  down  to 
their  work.  Most  of  the  earlier  novelties  deserved 
all  they  got  at  the  hands  of  Nordau.  One  was  a 
sort  of  school  of  the  first  personal  pronoun,  for  the 
worship  of  the  noble  self.  Considering  the  status 
of  its  founders  as  human  beings,  this  must  have 
been  wholly  an  effort  of  faith.  Others,  perhaps 
in  a  natural  deduction,  stood  for  the  littleness  of 
life.  These  called  themselves  the  Impassives,  their 
guiding  principle  was  that  of  saying  nothing  and 
lying  low.  They  differed  only  from  their  more 
distinguished  followers  of  fable,  in  saying  too 
much.  The  Mystics  had  some  vogue  for  a  while, 
under  a  creature,  half  painter,  half  writer,  and 
whole  crank,  who  called  himself  the  Sar  Peladan 
— the  first  title  because  it  suggested  a  descent 
from  "  the  royal  sage  Sardanapalus."  He  even 
shaved  for  the  part.  The  worst  infirmity  of  all  of 
them  was  their  affectation  of  a  regenerating 
mission.  There  was  more  to  uplift  the  soul  of  a 
nation  in  a  single  song  of  Theresa  than  in  all  the 
works  and  days  of  the  whole  gang. 

Without  precisely  intending  it,  Theresa  had 
been  a  sort  of  mainstay  of  the  Second  Empire. 
She  kept  the  masses  in  good  humour,  and  was  of 
more  use  to  Napoleon  III  than  a  dozen  legions. 
She  might  have  associated  herself  with  him  in  the 
famous  boast  :  "  As  to  order,  I  will  answer  for 
that."  Her  "  Nothing  is  Sacred  for  a  Sapper " 
helped  to  reconcile  the  people  to  the  army,  and  her 
"  Bearded  Woman  "  to  reconcile  them  to  themselves. 
The  Emperor  sent  for  her  to  sing  to  him,  and  gave 
her  a  substantial  memento  of  the  meeting.  She 


244  MY  HARVEST 

was  not  beautiful,  grace  was  not  a  word  in  her 
vocabulary,  but  she  had  abundant  humour  and  a 
well-trained  voice  of  extraordinary  power,  which 
she  deliberately  threw  out  of  gear  for  the  production 
of  the  most  unheard-of  effects.  She  sang  ordinary 
songs  in  an  extraordinary  manner,  deliberately 
distorting  the  final  note  of  some  cooing  chorus 
into  the  bass  of  a  fog-horn  with  catarrh.  It  was  art 
in  its  negation  of  itself,  and  supremely  welcome  to 
a  public  bored  to  death  by  the  monotony  of  its 
pleasures.  Her  gestures  matched  the  note,  and  the 
two  together  constituted  "  Theresa's  trick."  That 
trick  is  now  known  to  every  cabotine  of  them  all, 
and  its  monetary  value  has  sunk  under  the  excess 
of  supply. 

She  was  born  in  Paris  of  very  poor  parents  : 
her  father  played  the  fiddle  at  the  barrier  halls. 
She  learned  his  airs  as  he  practised  them,  and 
sang  them  to  herself  for  want  of  something  better 
to  do.  The  music-halls  were  growing,  as  they 
have  since  grown  the  world  over,  from  back  rooms 
to  gilded  saloons.  Theresa  thought  she  would 
try  her  fortune  with  them,  and  she  obtained  an 
engagement  at  the  Alcazar  in  a  company  which 
she  described  as  a  pitiable  collection  of  the  un- 
known. Their  main  line  was  sentiment ;  and  much 
against  her  will  she  followed  the  fashion.  The 
company  supped  together  on  New  Year's  Eve, 
and,  to  amuse  them,  in  strict  confidence,  she  hit 
on  the  idea  of  giving  her  "  Flower  of  the  Alps  "  in 
a  sort  of  rag-time.  The  lackadaisical  words  and  air 
of  the  original  were  preserved,  but  the  new  manner 
of  rendering  them  expressed  her  utter  contempt 


PEOPLE  AND  THINGS  245 

for  both.  She  was  rapturously  encored,  and  this 
time,  having  got  the  wretched  Flower  down,  she 
proceeded  to  jump  on  it,  in  the  passion  of  her 
anger  and  disdain.  When  she  left  the  table  the 
director  of  a  rival  house  sidled  up  to  her  with  the 
whisper  of  an  engagement. 

Willingly  ;    but  in  what  line  ? 

Burlesque. 

Nonsense ;  I  shall  never  get  a  hearing,  they 
want  sentiment,  you  know. 

I  daresay ;    but  will  you  do  it  ? 

Why  not  ?   but  you  are  making  a  mistake. 

Leave  that  to  me. 

In  less  than  a  year  she  was  earning  almost  any 
sum  she  had  the  face  to  ask. 

It  was  a  fishwife  tearing  the  poetry  of  the  keep- 
sakes to  tatters.  It  pleased  everybody — the  poor 
by  its  savage  irony,  the  others  by  its  appeal  to 
their  sense  of  a  general  emptiness  of  things.  The 
loud  and  deliberately  vulgar  woman  became  the 
favourite  vocalist  of  a  cynical  age. 

She  married  and  retired,  but  came  back  again, 
years  after  Sedan,  to  sing  her  old  clients  into  heart 
and  faith  for  better  times.  Her  favourite  theme 
was  marriage  as  a  patriotic  duty  :  Mariez  VOULS  ! 
France's  best  hope  was  in  her  children  :  let  her 
see  to  it  that  the  children  were  there. 

Everybody  with  the  slightest  pretension  to 
influence  was  at  work  on  the  revival  of  the  national 
spirit,  each  in  his  own  way.  The  pulpit  became 
patriotic  as  a  matter  of  course,  but  it  did  not 
take  its  proper  place  in  the  leadership  of  the 


246  MY  HARVEST 

movement  because  reconstruction  had  brought 
but  a  sword  between  Church  and  State.  In  some 
quarters,  even  now,  the  patriotism  is  rather  that 
of  the  old  order  than  of  the  new.  The  too-little 
known  M.  Maurras,  a  force  in  literature,  seems 
only  to  love  his  country  in  proportion  as  he  hates 
Jews,  foreigners,  democrats  and  wellnigh  everybody 
but  the  King  and  the  Pope. 

Pere  Didon  lived  to  take  a  more  truly  catholic 
view  in  the  non-dogmatic  sense,  but  he  had  to 
suffer  for  it.  I  heard  him  preach  at  St.  Philippe 
du  Roule,  and  could  not  help  feeling  at  the  time 
that  he  was  on  dangerous  ground.  His  theme 
was  the  extremely  difficult  one  for  a  Catholic,  the 
reconciliation  between  religion  and  science,  and 
he  seemed  to  do  wonders  with  it  while  we  were 
under  the  spell  of  his  oratory.  But  suddenly,  in 
the  full  tide  of  his  popularity,  he  was  silenced 
by  an  order  from  Rome,  and  banished  to  a  distant 
convent  in  Corsica,  with  a  strict  injunction  to 
hold  his  tongue.  He  did  so  for  a  whole  year,  when 
he  was  released,  but  only  for  foreign  travel,  and 
he  never  offended  in  the  same  way  again.  It  was 
the  most  dramatic  incident  of  its  time,  and  it 
had  lasting  effects  on  modernism  and  all  other 
movements  of  the  kind. 

Pere  Monsabre,  another  famous  preacher,  made 
sure  of  his  ground  from  the  first  in  his  Lenten 
sermons  at  Notre  Dame.  He  left  his  cell  once  a 
year  for  this  duty,  and  his  coming  was  the  event 
of  the  sacred  season.  When  Hyacinthe  apostatized 
(for  strict  Catholics  always  maintain  that  he  did 
no  less)  the  Church  looked  round  for  another 


PEOPLE  AND  THINGS  247 

intellectual  champion  and  found  him  in  the  fiery 
Dominican.  He  came  like  a  special  gift  of  Provi- 
dence— he  was  an  Ultramontane  of  the  Ultra- 
montanes — an  antidote  to  the  Gallican  bane,  and 
he  defended  Rome  and  the  Council  through  thick 
and  thin.  The  disasters  of  the  war  were  a  trial 
for  him  and  his  order,  but  he  saved  the  reputation 
of  both  by  showing  that  he  was  essentially  a 
Frenchman  in  feeling,  if  not  always  in  faith. 

To  characterize  him  according  to  Catholic  notions, 
he  was  a  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  for  the  crowd.  He 
had  formed  himself  on  the  model  of  that  giant 
theologian  who  undertook  to  review  all  the  truth 
known  to  the  world  and  to  harmonize  it  with  the 
teachings  of  the  Roman  Church.  The  Summa 
Theologies  was  his  second  Bible  ;  and  his  mission 
was  to  make  its  teaching  as  familiar  to  babes  as 
to  the  wise.  Like  its  author,  he  was  nothing  if 
not  argumentative,  logical,  a  system  builder.  The 
occasional  sermon  was  in  no  way  to  his  taste  ; 
with  few  exceptions  his  discourses  belonged  to 
one  vast  series,  and  were  but  so  many  finely 
fitting  parts  of  a  majestic  structure  of  faith.  For 
years  he  preached  on  the  Creed  alone  ;  and  when 
I  heard  him  was  still  in  its  opening  passage,  though 
he  had  filled  another  volume  of  his  works. 

Being  a  popularizer,  his  style  was  familiar. 
The  language,  however,  was  choice,  and  truths 
divine  seemed  to  come  mended  from  that  tongue 
with  its  French  of  the  Academy  tempered  by  the 
little  mannerisms  of  the  man  of  the  world. 

Pere  Hyacinthe  was  of  course  a  declared  rebel, 
but  his  fate  showed  how  difficult  it  is  for  a  priest 


248  MY  HARVEST 

of  our  time  to  play  the  part  of  Luther  over  again, 
and  to  leave  one  Church  for  a  commanding  position 
in  another  of  his  own  making  or  his  own  choice. 
He  professed  to  be  an  Old  Catholic  of  the  school  of 
Dollinger,  but  as  he  had  to  take  root  somewhere 
he  entered  into  communion  with  the  English 
establishment,  and  even  placed  himself  under  one 
of  its  Colonial  bishops — ruling,  I  think,  from 
Gibraltar.  He  used  to  hold  Sunday  services  in  a 
lecture  hall  in  the  Latin  Quarter,  hard  by  the 
Pantheon,  but  they  lacked  the  mystical  influence 
of  the  Roman  pomp.  How  different  this  setting 
from  the  stately  one  of  Notre  Dame,  which  he 
filled  with  worshippers  in  his  great  day,  and  where 
his  word  was  law,  just  because  it  was  not  his,  but 
only  the  voice  of  a  whole  hierarchy  of  sanctified 
figures.  On  his  lecture  platform  he  was  but  one 
more  recusant  at  the  best,  with  a  doctrine  more 
or  less  of  his  own  contriving.  He  was  unpleasantly 
reminded  of  the  difference  by  the  indignant  faithful 
who  seldom  failed  to  attend  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  the  services  into  contempt.  Well-bred 
Frenchmen  have  a  peculiar  habit  in  matters  of 
this  sort.  Nothing  can  exceed  the  decorum  of  their 
disorder  at  public  meetings  not  to  their  liking. 
They  neither  hiss  nor  "  boo."  On  the  contrary, 
they  seem  to  listen  with  a  rapt  attention,  until  the 
moment  comes  when  they  think  proper  to  draw 
out  a  silver  whistle,  blow  a  single  note  on  it,  short 
and  sharp,  and  then  restore  it  to  its  case,  to  listen 
with  the  same  attention  as  before.  This  is  organized 
interruption ;  and,  when  the  time  has  come  to 
stop  it,  the  offender  suffers  himself  to  be  conducted 


PEOPLE  AND  THINGS  249 

to  the  door  by  another  well-bred  person  of  the 
opposite  persuasion,  and  retires  raising  his  hat. 
I  do  not  say  it  describes  the  demeanour  of  all 
classes  of  dissentients  ;  it  is  only  the  way  of  those 
who  are  solicitous  of  the  proprieties. 

The  sermon  was  all  that  the  sermon  of  a  great 
preacher  should  be  in  manner  and  matter,  but 
somehow  it  seemed  woefully  lacking  in  its  scenic 
effects.  The  bare  benches  and  whitewashed  walls 
made  but  a  poor  substitute  for  the  arches  and 
altars  of  the  great  cathedral.  Monsabre  in  his 
statuesque  robes  of  white  flannel,  though  far  less 
of  a  fine  figure  of  a  man,  was  a  much  more  impres- 
sive personality  than  this  tall  middle-aged  gentle- 
man in  a  frock-coat,  with  nothing  of  the  livery 
of  his  vocation  but  his  tie. 

On  his  retirement  from  the  Roman  communion, 
Hyacinthe  married  an  American  lady  of  charming 
presence  and  agreeable  manners.  Both  by  her 
nationality  and  her  position  as  the  wife  of  a 
clergyman  who  had  his  way  to  make  in  his  calling, 
she  could  hardly  help  showing  signs  of  great  energy 
of  character.  Whenever  her  husband's  bishop 
passed  through  Paris  she  took  care  to  have  him  to 
luncheon,  and  on  one  occasion  it  was  my  good 
fortune  to  be  of  the  party.  It  would  have  made  a 
chapter  for  Trollope.  The  fare  was  all  that  a  lover 
of  good  cheer  could  desire,  and  the  delicate  atten- 
tions it  implied  were  accentuated  by  the  deferential 
amiability  of  the  hostess.  She  smiled,  I  will  not 
say  with  counterfeited  glee,  at  every  prelatical 
joke  ;  and  it  was  "  Yes,  Bishop  "  or  "  No,  Bishop  " 
at  every  turn,  when  he  laid  down  the  law. 


250  MY  HARVEST 

Meanwhile  France  was  beginning  to  seek  in 
colonial  expansion  compensation  of  a  kind  for  the 
lost  provinces  at  home.  She  was  active  in  this 
kind  of  adventure  both  in  Asia  and  in  Africa,  in 
the  latter  mainly  with  the  help  of  M.  de  Brazza,  a 
naval  lieutenant,  of  Italian  origin,  in  her  service. 
Stanley's  work  had  shown  that  the  Congo  was  one 
of  the  mightiest  rivers  for  commerce  and  empire, 
yet  France  had  no  direct  access  to  it  from  her  West 
African  possession.  De  Brazza  was  sent  out  on  a 
secret  mission,  though  nominally  only  as  an  ex- 
plorer at  large,  and  he  came  back  with  a  whole 
sheaf  of  treaties  with  native  chiefs  giving  him  a 
short  cut  to  the  stream  across  their  territories. 
The  treaties  probably  cost  no  more  to  negotiate 
than  a  liberal  outlay  in  rum  and  beads ;  but  they 
were  signed,  if  only  with  a  mark.  Stanley  was 
furious.  They  had  been  obtained,  he  said,  largely 
by  information,  and  by  still  more  substantial 
assistance,  supplied  by  himself  for  purely  inter- 
national ends.  He  had  traced  the  course  of  the 
river  for  mankind,  and  here  was  France  trying  to 
get  a  footing  on  her  own  account.  Her  agent  might 
have  perished  on  his  way,  without  the  aid  and  com- 
fort he  received  when  his  stores  had  given  out. 

It  was  a  pretty  quarrel,  but  Stanley  was  no  diplo- 
matist, and  he  managed  it  badly  at  the  start.  He 
took  the  opportunity  of  a  mere  congratulatory  dinner 
offered  to  himself  by  an  American  club  in  Paris, 
to  deliver  a  bitter  attack  on  the  French  explorer, 
whose  name  had  been  carefully  excluded  from  the 
list  of  guests.  He  began  by  telling  us  that  he  had 
met  his  destined  victim  on  the  boulevard  in  the 


PEOPLE  AND  THINGS  251 

morning,  and  said  to  him  :  "  My  dear  friend,  I  am 
going  to  give  you  your  finishing  stroke."  Of  course 
this  announcement  froze  us  all  in  our  places  as  we 
sat.  We  did  not  wish  to  see  anyone  receive  a 
stroke  of  that,  or  any  other  kind  ;  we  wanted  only 
to  hear  and  make  pleasant  speeches,  and  to  have 
just  so  much  intellectual  excitement  as  might 
facilitate  the  process  of  digestion.  Besides,  by  the 
very  position  of  some  of  the  party,  we  were  bound 
not  to  assist  in  the  fray.  Many  were  influential, 
official,  scientific,  or  financial  persons ;  in  fact, 
amongst  the  seventy  or  eighty  there  was  scarcely 
one  who  had  not  something  to  lose  by  being  iden- 
tified with  a  stand-up  fight.  So,  as  poor  Stanley 
went  on,  the  silence  grew  more  profound,  and 
though  there  was  a  cheer  at  the  end,  rightly  inter- 
preted it  was  a  cheer  of  thankfulness  for  a  happy 
release.  The  finishing  stroke  had  certainly  failed. 
The  papers  of  the  next  day  were  by  turns  angry 
and  elate — angry  with  Stanley  for  his  exhibition 
of  what  was  called  la  brutalite  Americaine  in  his 
unhappy  allusions  to  Brazza's  personal  appearance 
when  he  met  him  on  the  Congo ;  elate  at  the  thought 
that  he  never  would  have  been  in  such  a  rage, 
unless  his  rival  had  secured  some  great  triumph 
for  France. 

The  best  of  it  was  De  Brazza  contrived  to  be 
there  to  hear  the  speech.  Stanley  had  hardly  got 
under  way  when  the  door  opened,  and  the  other, 
with  a  deprecating  bow  to  the  company  for  the 
interruption,  glided  into  a  vacant  chair  and  sat 
out  the  whole  oration.  When  it  was  over,  he 
apologized  for  his  intrusion.  Happening  to  pass, 


252  MY  HARVEST 

he  had  heard  the  welcome  voice  of  his  brother 
explorer  with  a  mention  of  his  own  name,  and  he 
had  been  unable  to  resist  the  temptation  of  drop- 
ping in  to  pay  his  respects.  And,  since  there  he  was, 
might  he  now  crave  permission  to  say  a  few  words 
in  his  own  defence.  Then,  with  the  same  perfect 
courtesy  and  finish  of  manner,  he  went  on  to  express 
his  profound  obligations  to  his  fellow  traveller  for 
the  gift  of  a  few  pairs  of  boots  and  pots  of  pro- 
visions to  a  colleague  at  his  utmost  need,  and  to 
promise  that  if  ever  the  situation  was  reversed,  it 
would  be  his  pride  and  glory  to  repay  in  kind. 
With  this,  and  with  a  few  other  ironical  touches, 
he  bowed  himself  out. 

Stanley  had  unquestionably  been  worsted  in  the 
first  bout,  but  he  was  not  the  man  to  sit  down 
under  defeat.  His  sheer  faith  in  his  will  was  enor- 
mous. He  once  said  to  me  that,  even  under  sen- 
tence of  death,  he  would  never  take  it  lying  down, 
he  would  be  dragged  to  the  scaffold  by  main  force, 
hoping  for  the  miracle. 

A  few  days  after  he  invited  Brazza  to  breakfast 
at  the  Hotel  Meurice,  with  a  dozen  or  so  of  friends, 
including  Sir  Owen  Lanyon  and  a  few  of  the  corre- 
spondents. It  was  only  to  join  battle  once  more. 
On  the  removal  of  the  cloth  they  fell  to,  at  first 
with  maps  and  plans,  afterwards  with  wine  spilt 
on  the  board  to  indicate  the  course  of  the  great 
river,  franc  pieces  for  the  settlements,  and  spent 
lucifer  matches  for  the  forest  routes. 

"  What  right  had  you  to  hoist  your  flag  here  ?  " 
said  Stanley,  dabbing  a  coin  in  the  puddle  ;  "  we 
were  there  before  you." 


PEOPLE  AND  THINGS  253 

"  I  never  hoisted  it  there  at  all,"  returned  the 
other,  boldly  dabbing  his  coin  lower  down,  "  but 
I  got  over  yonder  before  you." 

"  Impossible  ;  you  could  never  have  done  it 
from  French  territory  in  a  three  days'  march." 

"  Why  not  ?  Permit  me  to  draw  the  bend  of 
the  river  as  it  really  runs,"  and  with  nimble  fore- 
finger he  changed  the  course  of  his  puddle  to  suit 
his  view  of  the  case. 

At  times  some  had  streams  on  their  own  account 
and  all  talked  together.  It  was  quite  amusing  to 
study  the  different  characteristics  of  the  men  at 
the  table.  Brazza  with  his  long,  thin,  Quixote-like 
face,  and  the  nervous  animation  of  his  Southern 
race  ;  Stanley  with  a  quieter  manner,  and  eyes 
that  seemed  all  light  whenever  he  thought  he  had 
scored.  The  placid  Sir  Owen  Lanyon,  as  an  English 
official,  was  of  course  "  out  of  it,"  but  he  watched 
the  game,  while  the  correspondents,  with  a  meek 
air  of  seeking  nothing  but  the  improvement  of  their 
minds,  artfully  kept  the  players  up  to  the  mark. 
The  lieutenant  was  led  into  admissions  which 
made  it  pretty  clear  that  he  had  been  sent  to  Africa 
in  a  twofold  capacity.  His  position  enabled  his 
government,  at  need,  to  disavow  him  as  a  mere 
agent  of  the  Belgian  Association,  or  to  back  him  as 
an  officer  of  France. 

Stanley  had  scrambled  through  on  points. 


CHAPTER   XVIII 
VICTORIAN    LONDON 

MY  next  stage  was  London.  I  saw  that  with 
a  few  years  more  of  it  I  should  have  to 
choose  my  naturalization  of  the  spirit  and  remain 
English  or  become  French.  It  is  as  difficult  to 
have  the  two  natures  in  equal  possession  as  to 
have  the  two  languages.  The  French  point  of  view 
would  gradually  claim  me  for  its  own  if  I  stayed, 
so  I  kept  England  as  a  country  and  France  as  a 
friend.  This  implies  no  moral  judgment  between 
them  ;  it  is  only  a  statement  of  preferences 
biassed,  and  rightly,  by  feeling  and  the  claims  of 
habit. 

So  I  made  the  great  change,  crossed  the  sea  with 
my  simple  belongings,  and  again  went  into  chambers 
in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields.  It  was  London,  and  for 
me,  as  English  born  and  bred,  it  was  the  larger 
world. 

There  was  an  interest  of  another  kind  which 
brought  me  into  touch  once  more  with  the  Vic- 
torian epoch  of  my  earlier  years.  I  could  not  have 
missed  it  for  anything  :  Victorian  I  was  for  good 
or  ill,  and  that  epoch  of  history  would  for  ever 
leave  its  mark.  It  was  ageing  :  there  was  grey  in 
its  locks  ;  we  had  yet  to  celebrate  the  first  Jubilee  ; 
as  it  stood  it  was  a  whole  and  self-contained 

254 


VICTORIAN   LONDON  255 

manifestation  of  the  human  spirit.  If  it  had  no 
longer  the  same  cocksure  confidence  in  itself,  it  was 
still  fairly  well  satisfied,  and  inclined  to  report  '  no 
change.5  The  great  strivings,  the  entirely  satis- 
fying ideals  of  the  opening  of  the  reign  had  lost 
some  of  their  driving  force,  but  enough  remained 
to  give  the  sense  of  vitality.  The  period  was  still 
in  a  state  kindred  to  that  known  in  physiology  as 
living  on  one's  fat.  In  famines,  we  are  told,  the 
portly  people  hold  out  longest  because  of  their 
reserve  of  adipose  matter  :  there  is  some  nutriment 
in  the  stomach  if  there  is  none  in  the  larder.  The 
good  Victorians  believed  that  they  had  the  where- 
withal in  Tennyson  and  Browning,  in  Ruskin  and 
Carlyle,  and  even  with  their  inheritance  of  Adam 
Smith,  commonly  supposed  to  be  no  digestive  for 
the  others,  though  he  was  a  moralist  of  the  first 
order  in  his  least-known  book.  These  were  for  law 
and  regulation,  the  ordered  life,  the  ethic  of  con- 
duct, morals,  duty,  the  traditional  pieties — benevo- 
lent or  at  any  rate  beneficent  capital,  submissive 
labour,  wealth  without  luxury,  poverty  without 
revolt.  The  nineteenth  century  and  the  progress 
of  the  age  held  the  field,  and  had  yet  to  become 
"this  so-called  nineteenth  century"  of  the  stump 
orator. 

What  some  pessimists  were  able  to  think  of  it 
was  far  from  being  the  general  note.  Their  Latter 
Day  view,  then  a  heresy,  now  almost  a  common- 
place, till  Alfred  Russel  Wallace  redeemed  its 
reputation  with  his  Wonderful  Century,  came  out, 
quite  recently,  in  full  and  perfect  echo.  Edward 
Carpenter,  the  recluse  of  our  northern  hills,  had  to 


256  MY  HARVEST 

return  thanks  for  congratulations  on  his  seventieth 
birthday,  and  did  it  in  these  terms  : 

"  Coming  to  my  first  consciousness,  as  it  were  of 
the  world  at  the  age  of  sixteen  (at  Brighton  in  1860), 
I  found  myself — and  without  knowing  where  I  was 
— in  the  middle  of  that  strange  period  of  human 
evolution,  the  Victorian  age,  which  in  some  respects, 
one  now  thinks,  marked  the  lowest  ebb  of  modern 
civilized  society  :  a  period  in  which  not  only  com- 
mercialism in  public  life,  but  cant  in  religion,  pure 
materialism  in  science,  futility  in  social  conventions, 
the  worship  of  stocks  and  shares,  the  starving  of 
the  human  heart,  the  denial  of  the  human  body 
and  its  needs,  the  huddling  concealment  of  the 
body  in  clothes,  the  '  impure  hush  '  on  matters  of 
sex,  class  division,  contempt  for  manual  labour, 
and  the  cruel  barring  of  women  from  every  natural 
and  useful  expression  of  their  lives,  were  carried 
to  an  extremity  of  folly  difficult  for  us  now  to 
realize. 

"  As  I  say,  I  did  not  know  where  I  was.  I  had 
no  certain  tidings  of  any  other  feasible  state  of 
society  than  that  which  loafed  along  the  Brighton 
parade  or  tittle-tattled  in  drawing-rooms.  I  only 
knew  I  hated  my  surroundings.  I  even  sometimes, 
out  of  the  midst  of  that  absurd  life,  looked  with 
envy,  I  remember,  on  the  men  with  pick  and  shovel 
in  the  roadway  and  wished  to  join  in  their  labour ; 
but  between,  of  course,  was  a  great  and  impassable 
gulf  fixed,  and  before  I  could  cross  that  I  had  to 
pass  through  many  stages.  I  only  remember  how 
the  tension  and  pressure  of  those  years  grew  and 
increased — as  it  might  do  in  an  old  boiler  when  the 


VICTORIAN    LONDON  257 

steam-ports  are  closed,  and  the  safety-valve  shut 
down ;  till  at  last,  and  when  the  time  came  that  I 
could  bear  it  no  longer,  I  was  propelled  with  a  kind 
of  explosive  force,  and  with  considerable  velocity, 
right  out  of  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century 
and  far  on  into  the  twentieth  !  " 

Tennyson  was  the  great  singer  of  that  earlier  age, 
and  its  great  poet,  say  what  you  like  of  him.  It 
suits  some  of  the  new  schools  to  run  him  down,  but 
without  imputing  motives  one  may  say  that  they 
lack  the  standpoint  for  judgment.  They  were 
born  too  late  for  that.  The  best  judges  of  a  man 
are  his  contemporaries.  They  alone  know  what 
new  thing  he  has  brought  into  the  world.  Instinc- 
tively they  turn  to  him  for  the  fresh  concept  of 
life  and  nature  that  helps  them.  The  critic  of  a 
new  time,  who  inherits  the  concept  only  as  plati- 
tude at  the  best,  is  in  no  position  to  feel  the  rapture 
of  the  sense  of  service. 

The  Victorian  Laureate  simply  burst  on  his  own 
generation,  with  his  classic  form  plus  the  passion 
for  nature,  his  pantheon  of  gods  and  goddesses  who 
were  all  breathing  a  breath  of  life  which  they  had 
not  enjoyed  since  the  time  of  the  Greeks,  or  at 
any  rate  the  Elizabethans.  The  stuffing  and  the 
Berlin  wool  of  the  intervening  period  seemed  to  be 
all  cast  aside.  There  was  a  most  exhilarating 
sense  of  great  problem,  and  great  solution  to  match 
—England  still  aspiring  to  save  Europe  by  her 
example,  a  little  smug  and  pretentious  no  doubt, 
but  with  all  the  dignity  of  a  conviction. 

Only  those  who  lived  even  as  mere  boys  and 
girls  in  their  teens  at  the  opening  of  the  Crimean 


258  MY  HARVEST 

war,  can  realize  the  hopes  and  the  aspirations  with 
which  the  country  plunged  into  that  great  adven- 
ture. The  lover's  cry  in  Maud  sounded  throughout 
the  whole  Anglo-Saxon  world,  and  Edgar  Poe,  no 
mean  judge  in  life  and  art,  worshipped  its  author. 
It  was  the  young  queen  on  the  throne,  unmatched 
as  a  symbol  of  the  purification  of  manners  since 
Spenser's  dream  of  Faerie.  Laugh  as  one  likes 
now — and  it  is  but  a  forced  laugh  at  best — she  was 
the  very  soul  of  all  the  loyalties  of  the  age, 
another  Una  with  the  lion  as  her  henchman  and 
arm  of  the  flesh.  What  matter  that  it  now  suggests 
only  the  lion  of  the  royal  arms  :  there  was  the 
faith  that  atones  for  all. 

Our  poet  lived  to  grow  old — who  can  help  that, 
or  would  if  he  could  !  Other  times  other  manners. 
The  Idylls  of  the  King  followed  Maud  in  its  due 
sequence  of  the  pitiless  years  and  their  pitiless  dis- 
enchantment s.  It  was  a  true  enchantment  when 
it  came — that  is  enough. 

The  liveliest  image  of  the  change  is  to  be  found 
in  the  comparison  between  the  Magda  of  Suder- 
mann  and  the  whole  sisterhood  of  the  Tennysonian 
type,  especially  the  Guinevere,  by  this  time  old 
enough  to  be  her  grandmother  many  times  removed. 
Guinevere's  lapse  is  her  sin  :  "  Thy  golden  head, 
my  pride  in  happier  summers,  at  my  feet  "  ;  we 
all  know  it  by  heart.  Magda's  lapse  is  her  whim, 
at  worst  but  her  indiscretion ;  and  she  has  no 
forgiveness  to  ask.  She  has  come  back  to  the  old 
home  just  to  see  the  old  people,  if  anything  else 
only  to  forgive  them  for  their  ban  that  with  a  less 
self-satisfied  nature  might  have  spoiled  her  career. 


VICTORIAN    LONDON  259 

Each  type  was  true  in  its  time  and  of  its  time,  and 
there  is  nothing  to  be  said  for  or  against  it  on 
account  of  the  mere  accident  of  the  setting.  Truth 
to  the  life  of  the  moment  is  all  you  can  ask  of  any 
piece  of  literature.  "  Tennyson  seemed  immense 
to  his  contemporaries,"  says  a  modern  critic,  who 
rashly  undertakes  to  fix  him  up  for  posterity. 
Immense  he  was.  Magda  may  live  to  become  a 
hussy  yet :  in  such  matters  there  is  no  last  word. 
And  above  all  avoid  cant  phrases:  Mid- Victorian, 
now  a  reproach  at  the  service  of  every  puny 
whipster  of  the  chair,  was  the  word  of  the  spell  in 
its  hour.  Its  essential  poet  has  his  vision  of  a  day 
of  supersession,  and  the  courage  to  take  it  as  in 
the  order  of  things  : 

Come,  my  friends, 

Tis  not  too  late  to  seek  a  newer  world. 
Push  off,  and  sitting  well  in  order  smite 
The  sounding  furrows  ;  for  my  purpose  holds 
To  sail  beyond  the  sunset  and  the  baths 
Of  all  the  western  stars,  until  I  die. 
It  may  be  that  the  gulfs  will  wash  us  down  ; 
It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  Happy  Isles, 
And  see  the  great  Achilles  whom  we  knew. 

Carlyle  was  another  man  of  the  moment  in  the 
sense  of  one  who,  in  his  fidelity  to  it,  was  yet  a 
man  of  all  time.  Such  high  teachings  go  to  the 
making  of  great  nations,  such  occasional  lapses 
are  but  the  weaknesses  of  the  flesh.  He  blew  a 
trumpet  blast  for  the  battle  of  life,  and  his  foibles 
were  but  his  pauses  to  recover  his  wind.  Why 
affect  to  repent  of  him  now  ?  Ruskin — as  art 
critic,  dead  if  you  like — as  seer  of  a  new  political 
economy,  safe  and  sound  for  all  time.  The  Brontes, 


260  MY  HARVEST 

Mid- Victorian  for  the  worst  only  in  some  dowdy 
phrase  that  has  lost  its  force  of  appeal,  but  great 
for  ever  in  bringing  a  new  thing  into  the  world  just 
when  it  was  wanted.  Theirs  was  the  Wellington 
touch  on  the  iron  string  of  duty,  the  sense  of  the 
novel  as  the  epic  of  life.  Dickens — what  a  revela- 
tion in  new  departures  of  the  same  kind  !  the 
apotheosis  of  the  common  man,  till  then  but  a  low- 
comedy  super  for  the  background  of  the  piece ; 
Thackeray  in  his  greater  work,  and  again  with 
the  sense  of  fiction  as  the  epic  of  a  whole  age  of 
manners  as  vast  in  its  sweep  as  a  picture  of  Italian 
pageantry. 

Browning  will  need  the  same  charity  of  con- 
struction— has  indeed  already  come  to  need  it,  now 
that  so  many  have  begun  to  make  wry  faces  over 
a  too  cheery  optimism  which  threatens  to  pall. 
His  was  pre-eminently  a  sane  genius  sufficing  to 
itself  in  its  supreme  contentment  with  his  time  as 
he  found  it,  and  his  perfect  faith  and  trust  in  all 
the  times  to  come.  The  greatest  visionary  in  the 
finer  sense  of  the  word,  and  withal  the  greatest 
diner  out. 

I  saw  something  of  him  through  his  intimacy 
with  the  Corkrans,  then  settled  in  London,  who 
had  known  him  and  his  household  in  Paris  in  his 
day  of  little  things.  His  life  in  Paris  was  simplicity 
itself.  The  two  poets,  husband  and  wife,  and  the 
husband's  father  and  sister  lived  for  a  time  under 
the  same  roof.  The  old  man  was  allowanced  in 
pocket-money,  partly  as  there  was  then  not  much 
money  of  any  kind  going  round,  but  also  because 
he  could  not  be  trusted  to  keep  any  of  it  that  came 


VICTORIAN    LONDON  261 

to  his  share,  the  moment  he  reached  the  bookstalls 
on  the  quays.  At  last  it  had  to  be  little  more  than 
just  enough  for  his  omnibus.  For  all  that  his 
daughter,  Miss  Browning,  who  was  treasurer,  had 
often  to  yield  to  a  piteous  appeal  for  a  few  coppers 
over  to  enable  him  to  complete  a  bargain  on  which 
he  had  already  left  the  deposit  of  his  fare. 

Every  day's  wanderings  seemed  to  yield  him  a 
type  for  his  sketch-book,  either  from  memory  of 
his  life  in  England,  or  from  fresh  observation. 
To  this  day  Miss  Alice  Corkran,  the  last  represen- 
tative of  one  branch  of  her  family,  has  in  her  pos- 
session these  precious  jottings  which  were  the 
delight  of  her  infancy  when  she  stood  little  higher 
than  the  old  man's  knee.  The  figures  are  dabbed 
in  as  though  with  primitive  colours  fresh  from  the 
earth,  the  descriptive  legend  sometimes  issues 
balloonwise  from  their  lips.  What  is  it  all,  in  its 
deeper  significance,  but  the  Men  and  Women  of  the 
son  in  the  sketch  to  which  he  has  given  the  place 
of  honour  of  the  series  ? 

He  stood  and  watched  the  cobbler  at  his  trade, 
The  man  who  slices  lemons  into  drink, 
The  coffee-roaster's  brasier  and  the  boys 
That  volunteer  to  help  him  turn  its  winch. 
He  glanced  o'er  books  on  stalls  with  half  an  eye, 
And  fly-leaf  ballads  on  the  vendor's  string, 
And  broad-edge  bold-print  posters  by  the  wall. 

That  was  the  old  man  on  his  rambles,  with  one 
or  other  of  the  Corkran  children  to  bear  him  com- 
pany. His  favourite,  Alice,  was  afterwards  the 
charming  writer  for  children  of  both  growths.  One 
day  the  pair  were  missing  at  the  dinner  hour,  and 


262  MY  HARVEST 

both  families  set  up  the  hue  and  cry — to  find  them 
at  last  by  the  riverside,  the  old  man  sketching  for 
his  life,  and  the  child  at  his  elbow  munching  a  cake. 
Any  bit  of  character  that  came  his  way  was  irresist- 
ible to  him,  and  he  had  to  make  a  note  of  it  at  once. 
In  one  book  of  the  kind — before  me  as  I  write — I 
find  a  rough  customer  with  dishevelled  hair  and 
all-pervading  scowl,  labelled  "  Barabbas."  Further 
on  it  is  "  The  Tragedy,"  suggesting  playful  reflec- 
tions on  his  son's  not  altogether  successful  struggle 
for  the  honours  of  dramatic  authorship.  "  I  say, 
Dick,"  runs  the  legend,  "  my  brother  Tom's  been 
writing  a  tragedy.  Very  deep  one  I  can  assure  you, 
for  none  of  us  understand  a  line  of  it.  One  line  is 
not  to  be  laughed  at :  it  displays  a  wonderful 
acquaintance  with  the  Copernican  system." 

After  this  we  have  "  The  Swindlers,"  the  time- 
honoured  confidence  trick,  in  a  setting  of  the 
manners  and  customs  of  the  day. 

Many  drawings  are  untitled,  and  we  have  to 
depend  on  the  dialogue  for  the  cue  :  "  My  brother 
— ?  read  son — isn't  one  of  them  that  write  poetry 
by  the  pailfull — when  he  sits  down  to  write  he 
always  takes  time  to  consider,  he  always  thinks 
first." 

Then  the  lawyers  have  their  turn,  in  a  set  of 
skits  racy  in  character  and  fun.  There  is  even  a 
dim  adumbration  of  Sludge  the  Medium  in — 
"  Master's  comp'tnts — and,  when  you've  done 
with  it — says  he  will  thank  you  for  one  of  them 
tables.  Some  of  the  farmers  from  Salisbury  have 
been  laying  a  wager  of  a  supper  and  two  dozen  of 
wine,  that  they'll  make  it  dance."  Even  "  A 


VICTORIAN    LONDON  263 

Genealogy  of  Abdel-Kader  "  has  its  place,  copied 
apparently  from  "  Galignani,  13  December,  1852," 
though  this  is  mere  scrap-book  lore.  But  the  rest, 
and  by  no  stretch  of  fancy,  is  the  germ  in  Browning 
the  father,  of  Browning  the  son,  without  the  touch 
for  genius  that  was  Nature's  own  secret,  and 
probably  will  be  to  the  end  of  time. 

Perhaps,  with  a  better  chance,  the  old  bank 
clerk  might  himself  have  left  something  for  the 
anthologies.  Let  that  be  as  it  may,  he  was  well 
and  generously  inspired,  when  he  determined  to 
do  his  best  for  his  son  by  giving  him  a  University 
education.  Without  this  the  young  poet  might 
have  found  his  way  too  hard,  for  with  it  he  was 
often  sore  beset.  He  might  dare  be  himself  in  new 
methods,  since  he  was  of  the  cultured  band,  and 
his  eccentricities  compelled  toleration  at  the  least. 
So,  from  the  first,  he  had  all  the  benefit  of  the 
classic  environment.  He  nothing  common  did,  or 
mean,  to  earn  his  living.  He  was  spared  the  black- 
ing factory  of  Dickens ;  and  though  even  this 
proved  a  blessing  in  disguise  to  the  novelist,  as  a 
matter  of  choice  it  would  have  been  a  rash  bid  for 
success,  only  to  be  justified  by  the  result.  The 
"  poetic  child  "  wants  a  good  deal  of  nursing,  yet 
it  must  be  of  the  right  sort.  The  wrong  throws  it 
all  out  of  gear. 

I  have  often  thought  that  Watts-Dunton  took 
too  much  pains  with  his  ministrations  of  this  kind. 
He  seemed  to  cure  his  nurslings  of  every  bad  habit, 
including  the  genius.  They  were  reclaimed  to 
respectability,  but  too  often  at  the  expense  of  the 
divine  fire.  Yet  he  might  have  been  warned,  if  he 


264  MY  HARVEST 

had  condescended  to  be  aware  of  it,  by  the  reforma- 
tion of  the  last  of  the  Cruikshanks — a  sad  repro- 
bate of  the  coarser  kind  in  the  earlier  and  successful 
part  of  his  career.  He  soaked  in  low  taverns,  and 
too  often  could  only  get  out  of  them  with  a  lurch. 
One  in  particular,  "The  Black- Jack,"  which  was 
very  much  to  his  taste,  was  demolished  many  years 
ago  when  Clare  Market  was  swept  out  of  existence. 
Savage  knew  it,  and  perhaps  Johnson ;  Turpin 
and  Sheppard  certainly  left  unpaid  scores  on  its 
slate. 

When  the  artist  was  captured  by  the  teetotallers, 
greatly  to  the  improvement  of  his  manners — his 
gift  of  caricature  seemed  to  become  part  of  the 
spoil.  He  never  realized  his  loss,  for  to  the  last  he 
gloried  in  the  reformation  without  realizing  its 
effects.  He  ostentatiously  drank  Thames  from  the 
tap  at  public  banquets,  and  sometimes  made  him- 
self up,  with  his  dinner-napkin  twisted  round  his 
brow,  into  a  travesty  of  his  old  and  wicked  self. 
The  pilgrim  to  the  shrine  of  his  house  in  the  Hamp- 
stead  Road,  was  taken  up  to  his  study  to  see  and 
smell  the  old  foul  pipe  he  had  smoked  in  his  state 
of  sin,  the  battered  pewter  from  which  he  had 
quaffed  his  beer.  For  all  that  the  work  of  his 
period  of  redemption  was  the  sorriest  stuff — wit- 
ness the  appalling  picture  which  he  bequeathed  to 
The  National  Gallery,  much  to  its  consternation, 
and  which  had  to  be  hidden  away  in  the  cellars 
after  a  brief  career  in  the  light  of  day.  His  subject 
was  the  curse  of  the  drinking  habit,  from  the  cradle 
to  the  grave.  The  scheme  of  composition  was  a 
sort  of  chess-board  with  a  moral  against  alcohol  in 


VICTORIAN    LONDON  265 

every  square.  You  began  with  a  christening  scene 
— the  family  party  toasting  the  child's  health  on 
the  return  from  church.  Next  came  godfather's 
silver  mug,  filled  with  devil's  brew,  mild  at  the 
start,  as  a  moral  against  the  temptations  of  boy- 
hood. Early  manhood  and  the  festive  board  was 
the  subject  of  the  next  compartment.  Middle  age 
and  the  tortures  of  gout  took  their  turn,  and  so  on, 
until  you  came  to  a  suggestion  at  least  of  a  wind 
up  in  spontaneous  combustion  for  the  final  scene. 
It  was  pitifully  poor  from  first  to  last,  without  a 
trace  of  the  old  quality  of  his  touch. 

I  am  quite  aware  that  years  before  that,  and 
still  belonging  to  his  age  of  repentance,  his  series  of 
etchings  called  The  Bottle,  or  the  Drunkard's  Fate 
had  something  of  the  old  fire.  But  the  difference 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  he  was  then  in  his  period 
of  struggle  and  occasional  lapse,  and  that  his 
angel  of  darkness  was  still  giving  the  other  one  a 
pretty  hard  time. 

Watts-Dunton's  exceedingly  well-meant  atten- 
tions entailed  much  the  same  consequences  on  his 
most  distinguished  inmate.  Swinburne  was  no 
doubt  sorely  in  need  of  them,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  civilized  and  decent  society,  for  he  had 
sometimes  suffered  himself  to  become  the  butt  of 
the  meanest  of  mankind.  I  remember  once  declin- 
ing an  invitation  to  see  him  in  his  hour  of  weakness, 
offered  to  me  by  a  creature  whom,  in  his  sober 
senses,  he  would  hardly  have  recognized  with  a 
nod,  if  he  had  been  able  to  recognize  him  at  all. 
Watts-Dunton  changed  all  this,  and  in  his  quiet 
home  at  The  Pines  gave  his  friend  the  dignity  of 


266  MY  HARVEST 

surroundings  suited  to  his  standing  in  society  and 
to  his  position  in  literature. 

The  reformation  was  complete  and  absolute. 
The  day  was  laid  out  as  it  is  laid  out  in  the  monas- 
tery, and  to  complete  the  likeness,  the  meal  was 
often  eaten  in  silence.  When  it  was  over,  if  the 
occasional  guest  at  luncheon  was  to  the  poet's 
liking — and  nobody  was  invited  without  his  per- 
mission— he  unbent  charmingly  in  talk  about 
literature  at  large,  and  in  the  display  of  choice 
pieces  from  his  fine  collection  of  old  editions.  The 
best  part  of  the  day  was  for  its  close,  when  host  and 
guest,  and  later  on  the  host's  charming  wife,  spent 
the  quiet  evening  together,  rarely,  I  believe,  with  a 
single  visitor  from  the  outside.  The  change  from 
the  Swinburne  of  the  earlier  days  was  nothing  less 
than  a  metamorphosis  of  the  old  type.  He  was  a 
new  being. 

But  for  him,  I  think,  Watts-Dunton  would  have 
extended  his  interest  to  the  literature  of  the  day.  In 
his  view,  Swinburne  not  only  closed  the  Victorian 
cycle,  but  left  no  successor,  and  I  think  that  in  his 
heart  of  hearts  he  drew  another  line  of  the  same 
sort  in  regard  to  his  own  critical  labours.  The 
immediate  present  was  simply  red  ruin  and  the 
breaking  up  of  laws. 

Until  age  and  growing  infirmities  consigned  him 
to  the  retirement  of  his  own  home  he  was  the  most 
delightful  companion  for  all  who  had  the  privilege 
of  his  friendship.  He  was  often  a  visitor  at  our 
house  when  I  lived  with  the  Corkrans  in  Mecklen- 
burgh  Square  ;  but,  on  the  strict  condition  that 
we  should  bar  all  other  hospitality  for  that  night, 


VICTORIAN    LONDON  267 

he  gave  us  of  his  best.  He  was  a  bit  of  an  egoist, 
not  of  himself  exactly,  but  rather  of  the  entire  past 
to  which  he  belonged.  All  Aylwin — his  last  work 
of  importance,  and  with  the  giants  of  early  Victoria 
for  its  characters — was  implicit  in  his  talk.  The 
book  is  unintelligible  without  a  key,  but  with  it 
you  get  access  to  the  Victorian  age  in  its  day  of 
power.  He  was  of  that  little  circle  of  which  Whistler 
was  the  brightest  ornament,  and  he  seemed  to  feel 
that  nothing  of  note  had  happened  since  "  Jimmy  v 
ceased  to  make  salads  and  epigrams,  and  kept  his 
flatterers  on  their  good  behaviour  with  the  sharp- 
ness of  his  tongue. 

Swinburne  was  in  every  way  better  for  his  new 
environment,  in  peace  and  dignity  of  life,  but 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  change  marked  a 
diminution  of  his  powers.  The  best  belonged 
to  the  period  of  his  wild  youth  before  the  arch- 
reformer  of  genius  had  taken  him  in  hand. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM 

THE  transition  between  these  and  the  Mid- 
Victorians  proper  came  in,  I  think,  with 
Stevenson.  But  I  did  not  know  how  transitional 
he  was  till  I  came  to  London  and  studied  him 
on  his  own  soil.  In  a  foreign  country  an  English 
book  is  but  an  importation  smacking  of  the  voyage 
and  the  change  of  temperature.  For  the  perfect 
flavour,  you  want  the  very  air  of  the  place  of 
origin.  Let  Tauchnitz  do  what  he  may,  Pickwick 
under  the  Pyramids  is  rather  a  struggle  for 
atmosphere.  In  spite  of  Stevenson's  bias  towards 
the  old  literature  his  outlook  was  entirely  fresh. 
I  began  to  realize  how  much  had  passed  since 
Charles  Reade  was  the  newest  thing  in  romance. 
"  Yet  it  moves  "  is  as  true  of  literature  as  of  the 
sphere.  Compare  a  philosophic  novel  of  Voltaire 
with  one  of  Henry  James  :  the  former  a  mere 
didactic  principle  that  could  have  been  stated 
in  two  lines,  with  no  more  construction  than  a 
steel  chain,  nor  of  character  than  a  box  of  chess- 
men, the  latter  a  triple  distillation  of  both  in  sweet 
and  fanciful  thought. 

Though  a  cosmopolitan,  James  is  still  hard  to 
understand  without  his  British  setting.  Even  in 
the  more  purely  American  work,  he  is  still  the 
Briton  studying  a  foreign  type.  I  remember  a 

268 


LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM      269 

chat  with  him  at  the  club  in  which  I  asked  him 
as  a  kind  of  favour  to  cross  to  America,  and  to 
stand  and  deliver  on  the  question  :  "  How  do 
you  like  our  country,  sir  ?  "  He  did  go  there 
shortly  after,  as  we  know,  and  with  precious 
results,  but  I  claim  no  rights  in  the  happy  thought. 
I  was  afterwards  indebted  for  piquant,  if  only 
commonplace,  particulars  of  his  life  and  work  to 
a  rather  rather  famous  lion  hunter  of  the  other 
sex,  who  had  stalked  him  at  Rye  with  a  letter  of 
introduction.  She  reported  on  him  as  a  peri- 
patetic of  dictation  to  a  shorthand  writer,  with 
occasional  lapses  to  the  sofa  or  the  arm-chair. 
He  trod  his  subject  for  its  innermost  juices,  and 
occasionally,  as  with  the  other  wine  pressers, 
was  glad  to  mop  his  brow  when  his  task  was  done. 
I  give  it  as  I  had  it,  and  I  am  willing  to  admit 
there  was  a  tinge  of  malice  in  it  as,  on  her  own 
admission,  he  did  not  take  kindly  to  the  intrusion. 
"As  for  his  style,"  she  said,  "  well,  he  reminds  me 
of  the — how  do  you  call  it  ?  you  know  what ; 
and  yet  there  are  not  even  two  Incomprehensibles 
—in  this  case — but  only  one,  for  there  could  be 
no  double  of  Henry  James." 

Kipling  came  upon  me  as  a  glorious  innovator — 
the  Empire  in  the,  till  then  unconsidered  trifle  of 
its  maker,  the  common  man.  This  brought  us 
abreast  of  the  time  with  its  sense  of  the  poetry  of 
steam  and  electricity,  and  its  power  to  make  a 
stoker's  fire-shovel  as  picturesque  as  any  implement 
in  Homer.  It  still  atones  for  all  later  aberrations 
when  society  persuaded  him  that  he  was  a  prophet 
on  a  mount. 


270  MY  HARVEST 

I  met  him  but  once,  at  a  grand  dinner  given  by 
Mr.  A.  P.  Watt,  the  Literary  Agent,  to  his  young 
men.  Watt  was  the  Moses  who  brought  the  success- 
ful person  of  letters  out  of  Grub  Street,  and  put 
him  in  line  with  the  merchant  prince  for  results. 
Pope  managed  to  get  ten  thousand  out  of  his 
Iliad,  but  it  was  only  the  exception  that  proved 
the  rule  of  poverty  and  neglect.  How  many 
thousands  of  writers  have  had  to  part  with  master- 
pieces for  a  song  to  the  Lintots  of  their  time  ! 
Think  of  the  long  procession  of  them  with  toil, 
envy,  want,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  for  their  portion, 
till  this  genial  wolf  of  the  trade, — for  Watt  had 
graduated  in  a  publisher's  office — saw  there  was 
business  to  be  done  by  going  over  to  the  lambs. 
Think  of  Dickens,  with  his  ever  victorious  start, 
yet  glad  to  pledge  himself  for  future  masterpieces 
at  a  trifle  in  three  figures,  and  still  a  loser  in  highest 
possibles  when  Forster  had  procured  some  sort  of 
revision  of  the  terms.  But  for  Watt  or  his  followers 
in  the  field,  the  Kiplings,  the  Barries,  the  Bennetts, 
and  Wells  might  to-day  have  been  in  the  same 
plight,  or  worse.  "  There  he  goes,"  groaned  a 
victim  of  the  old  system,  "  on  a  penny  'bus  ride  to 
Paternoster  Row,  with  a  manuscript  in  his  pocket, 
and  a  small  fortune  for  his  own  share." 

The  very  pugilists  have  their  agents  now,  and 
Carpentier  enters  the  ring  with  the  certainty,  win 
or  lose,  of  an  endowment  for  his  night's  work. 
Though  Tom  Sayers  had  his  modest  annuity,  and 
his  little  six-roomer  in  Camden  Town  all  to  him- 
self, it  was  due  to  the  public  generosity.  Most  of 
the  veterans  of  that  craft  were  glad  to  haunt 


LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM     271 

the  sporting  taverns  for  their  drinks,  and  their 
free  lunches  of  bread  and  cheese  munched  minus 
the  teeth  lost  in  the  service.  The  very  poets 
and  stars  of  the  earlier  music-halls  had  no  better 
prospect,  until  the  agent  came  to  their  aid,  to 
enable  the  author  of  "  Hi-tiddly-hi-ti,"  and  "If 
you  want  to  know  the  time  ask  a  p'liceman  "  to 
die  a  fundholder. 

It  was  all  new  to  me  as  a  returned  prodigal  of 
opportunity,  and  I  settled  down  to  the  sheer 
enjoyment  of  it,  leaving  the  moral  to  take  care  of 
itself.  London,  London,  the  mighty  and  the  rare ! 
that  was  enough — a  cinema  effect  of  figures  in 
lightning  movement  across  the  screen,  out  of 
nothingness  for  a  moment's  joy  of  life,  and  back 
to  it  again  within  the  second,  the  best  image  of 
the  whole  course  of  man.  A  crumb  of  mellow 
cheese  under  the  microscope  may  be  offered 
as  a  variant,  for  the  spectacle  of  a  feverish  energy 
of  being  to  no  particular  end  or  aim. 

I  wrote  a  little  here  and  there  by  way  of  getting 
a  foothold,  and  soon  joined  the  editorial  staff  of 
The  Daily  News.  Frank  Hill  was  then  in  the 
chair.  Though  with  scant  leisure  for  other  work, 
he  had  to  his  credit  a  volume  on  the  leading  writers 
and  politicians  of  the  day,  laboured  with  a  some- 
what too  manifest  art  for  epigram  and  point. 
Chained  to  his  desk,  he  seemed  to  shiver  at  all 
contact  with  the  outside  world,  and  he  had  the 
nervousness  and  irritability  of  his  state  of  isolation. 
There  was  a  legend  in  the  office  of  a  tiff  between 
him  and  Pigott — not  the  other  one,  of  course — 
but  in  his  later  years  Examiner  of  Plays.  Pigott, 


272  MY  HARVEST 

then  a  leader  writer  for  the  paper,  was  of  the  same 
sensitive  cast  as  his  chief,  who  on  this  occasion 
had  put  him  to  the  torture  of  a  snub.  He  said 
nothing  at  the  time  but  walked  straight  to  his 
room,  only  to  return  in  a  few  minutes  to  breathe 
this  through  the  half-opened  door.  "  Hill,  I 
think  it  right  to  tell  you  that  I  consider  your  last 
observation  uncalled  for."  "  Oh,  do  you  ?  J: 
groaned  Hill  in  the  same  dead-and-alive  tone. 
'  Yes,"  gasped  Pigott  with  another  prodigious 
effort ;  and  the  incident  was  closed.  So  we  ex- 
change cartels  of  defiance  in  these  degenerate 
times.  It  is  still  the  common  note.  Formidable 
in  print,  with  the  whole  armoury  of  attack  and 
defence  at  command,  writers  are  often  nothing 
without  their  pens.  A  child  shall  lead  them ; 
and  happily  its  mother  almost  invariably  does. 
Hill  was  a  journalistic  recluse,  with  a  sole  concern 
for  the  interest  of  his  literary  columns.  When  the 
three  leaders  and  the  reviews  were  off  his  mind, 
the  rest  was  left  to  the  sub-editor  with  but  two  or 
three  men  under  his  command.  The  order  of 
importance  has  since  been  entirely  reversed.  The 
sub-editor  as  newsgatherer  is  now  the  chief  authority, 
and  the  literature  has  to  take  care  of  itself. 

Hill  had  Herbert  Paul  on  his  staff  :  and  prided 
himself  on  successful  overtures  to  Andrew  Lang. 
Both  were  wonders,  Paul  chiefly  in  politics,  Lang 
in  everything  but  that,  for  he  had  no  sympathy 
with  the  policy  of  the  paper.  Paul  was  a  Balliol 
man  of  the  Jowett  group,  with  all  the  savagery  of 
Swift  in  his  style,  and  much  of  his  power.  He 
was  widely  and  deeply  read  in  modern  as  in  ancient 


LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM     273 

literature,  and  he  had  a  prodigious  memory  which 
he  cultivated  by  never  taking  a  note.  He  dipped 
his  quill  in  a  liquid  fortified,  I  suspect,  with  a  dash 
of  vitriol,  and  went  his  way  without  an  erasure. 
At  a  moment's  notice  he  could  give  a  sympathetic 
estimate  of  a  great  writer  in  the  whole  range  of 
his  work,  or  make  out,  for  a  political  opponent,  a 
passport  to  the  shades  for  future  use,  with  marks 
of  identification  omitting  no  single  particular 
of  turpitude.  His  health  finally  broke  down 
under  the  strain  of  a  series  of  historical  works 
written  too  closely  to  time,  yet  showing  not  the 
slightest  trace  of  it  in  craftsmanship. 

Lang  was  another  person  of  the  same,  and 
perhaps  even  a  wider  range,  matching  the  versa- 
tility of  the  players  in  Hamlet.  His  touch  was 
feathery  in  its  lightness,  if  his  social  satire  was 
not  always  in  the  happy  mean  of  urbanity  and 
good  nature.  He  was  of  the  few  who  write  with 
as  much  ease  as  they  are  read  with  pleasure.  I 
have  known  him  get  his  subject  from  Hill,  and 
there  and  then  sit  down  at  the  corner  of  the  table 
to  turn  out  his  leader  well  within  the  hour.  When 
it  was  done,  he  gathered  up  his  slips  from  the  floor, 
and  without  a  glance  of  revision  sent  them  upstairs 
to  the  printer.  This,  as  also  I  imagine  the  readiness 
of  Paul,  came  from  the  familiarity  with  great 
studies.  His  leaders  and  fancies  were  but  chips 
from  the  workshop  in  which  he  had  fashioned 
his  thoughts  on  history,  philosophy,  folklore  and 
what  not  during  the  earlier  part  of  the  day.  His 
journalism  was  but  a  by-product,  yet  in  more 
ways  than  one,  it  sometimes  exceeded  the  value 


274  MY  HARVEST 

of  the  staple.  His  letters,  as  I  once  took  occasion 
to  say,  had  the  same  charm  of  spontaneity.  They 
came  from  a  storehouse  of  often,  in  my  judgment, 
wrong-headed  opinions,  which  he  cherished  mainly 
for  the  sake  of  their  picturesque  charm.  He  was 
not  a  Scotch  Tory  for  nothing — and  I  fancy  that 
would  have  been  his  label  in  a  confession  of  faith. 
"  I  could  prophesy  if  I  cared,"  he  once  wrote 
to  me.  He  seemed  to  think  that  ours  was,  and 
always  would  be,  a  horrid  rough-and-tumble  sort 
of  a  world,  with  its  only  solace  in  art  for  life's 
sake.  World-bettering  on  the  big  scale  was  futile, 
and  only  made  you  bad  company. 

He  seemed  to  dread  boredom  above  all  other 
things.  Chance  acquaintance  met  at  dinner, 
hostesses  who  wanted  to  use  him  as  a  nice  man 
for  afternoon  tea,  found  him  trying.  He  would 
slip  away  from  the  front  drawing-room  with  its 
buzz,  on  pretence  of  looking  at  a  picture  in  the 
antechamber,  and  thence  make  his  escape. 

His  treatment  of  an  unfortunate  American 
who  got  him  to  dinner,  white  tie  and  all,  at  "  The 
Cheshire  Cheese  "  went  quite  beyond  the  bounds. 
It  was  in  the  Dog  Days  too ;  and  as  one  master- 
piece after  another  of  that  robust  cuisine  came 
upon  the  board — steak,  potatoes  in  their  jackets, 
tankards  of  stout  in  which  you  might  almost  have 
stood  a  knife  upright,  with  hissing  hot  toasted 
cheddar  to  follow,  he  waived  them  with  a  squeaking 
'  What  is  this  ?  "  which  carried  dismay  to  us  all. 
It  was  horrid,  but  I  am  ashamed  to  say  it  was 
still  sport  of  a  kind.  Its  culmination  came  when 
the  host,  fresh  from  his  guide-book,  explained 


LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM     275 

that  this  was  the'  favourite  fare  of  Dr.  Johnson. 
"  Dr.  Johnson — who  was  he  ?  "  was  the  merciless 
parting  shot. 

In  his  day,  and  to  the  last  in  his  own  way,  he 
was  one  of  the  handsomest  men  I  have  ever  seen. 
There  was  so  much  distinction  in  the  face  ;  and, 
when  its  time  came,  the  snow-cap  of  grey  hair 
was  an  added  charm  for  the  lofty  brow.  He  was 
of  a  most  melancholy  cast  in  his  innermost  re- 
cesses of  being ;  and  his  boundless  activities  were 
but  resolute  attempts  to  make  the  best  of  a  bad 
job — existence.  He  was  no  tuft-hunter,  yet  I 
think  he  sometimes  suffered  lords  beyond  the 
requirements  of  the  case.  His  translations  are 
among  his  masterpieces.  What  must  he  have 
thought  of  our  modern  Samuel  Butler's  Homer 
with  its  deliberate  jog-trot  of  colloquialisms  for 
the  talk  of  the  skies !  or  of  Mr.  Masefield's 
Pompey  the  Great  as  the  dignity  of  history  in 
drama  ?  He  was  of  the  few  who  broke  a  vic- 
torious lance  with  Anatole  France.  He  would  not 
have  his  Joan  of  Arc  explained  away  on  theories 
of  hallucination,  or  of  suggestion  by  priestly 
fraud. 

Such  was  the  team  in  the  old  days.  Many 
changes  were  to  come  in  the  course  of  transition 
to  the  new  ha'penny  model  of  our  time.  This 
has  been  marked  in  a  way  by  the  passing  of  the 
editor  of  the  old  type.  The  new  one  is  no  longer, 
of  necessity  at  least,  a  scholarly  recluse,  he  is  a 
man  of  the  world.  His  three  leaders  are  reduced 
to  one  and  a  few  scrappy  paragraphs.  His  sub- 
editor has  in  a  manner  supplanted  him  by  learning 


276  MY  HARVEST 

to  let  the  facts  in  their  dressing  speak  for  them- 
selves. This  artificer  forms  opinion  by  suggestion 
and  enables  his  reader  to  say  '  I  told  you  so ' 
without  knowing  that  he  has  himself  been  told. 
His  room,  which  used  to  be  one  of  the  smallest 
in  the  office,  is  now  comparable  in  size  and  the 
number  and  multitudinous  activities  of  the  staff, 
to  the  kitchen  of  a  big  hotel.  Add  to  this  that 
the  departments  have  been  increased  beyond  the 
dreams  of  the  past.  There  is  a  huge  contingent 
for  illustration,  staffed  with  all  the  labour,  artistic 
and  mechanical,  belonging  to  that  branch  of  the 
work — draughtsmen  for  the  sketches,  craftsmen  for 
the  production  of  the  plates.  So,  while  this  is 
still  the  newest  thing  in  one  way,  in  another,  as 
picture  writing,  it  is  a  reversion  to  the  youth  of 
the  world.  All  the  old  work  had  to  be  done  by  the 
pen :  Senior's  descriptions  were  literature. 

The  library  again  is  an  integral  part  of  the 
equipment.  In  the  earlier  time  the  leader  writer 
had  to  carry  all  his  information  in  his  own  head. 
Paul  could  do  it,  but  then  his  was  the  head  of 
Paul.  The  books  of  reference  might  almost  be 
counted  on  the  fingers.  Wilson,  so  long  the  main- 
stay of  The  Times,  told  me  that  the  only  thing 
of  the  kind  in  his  room  at  the  office  was  an  Army 
List,  and  that  several  years  out  of  date.  In  these 
days,  whatever  the  topic,  you  have  only  to  touch 
a  bell,  and  you  are  instantly  furnished  with  all 
the  information  bearing  on  your  subject  from  a 
miniature  British  Museum  on  the  premises.  And 
there  is  this  to  the  good,  it  is  information  brought 
down  to  the  very  day  of  writing.  The  librarian, 


LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM     277 

often  a  young  woman,  is  an  Atlas  staggering 
under  the  burden  of  a  world  of  reference,  and 
understood  to  be  ready  to  resign  or  to  commit 
suicide  at  a  moment's  notice,  on  failure  to  meet 
all  demands  at  sight. 

I  did  my  best  in  my  own  behoof  with  a  small 
amateurish  collection  of  my  own.  When  E.  T. 
Cook  came  into  the  succession  of  the  editorship, 
he  continued  the  same  plan  from  his  own  previous 
practice,  and  we  exchanged  good  offices  at  need. 
He  was  a  man  of  the  new  generation,  and  a  remark- 
able one.  Given  his  proper  supply  of  cigarettes, 
I  think  he  would  have  been  capable  of  writing  the 
whole  leader  page  on  an  emergency.  I  often  saw 
him  in  a  tight  place  :  I  never  saw  him  turn  a 
hair.  At  Oxford,  I  believe,  he  was  one  of  the  best 
Aristotelians  of  the  time  :  so  the  drilling  and  the 
milling  of  the  academical  system  counts,  when 
the  student  is  of  the  right  sort. 

Newspaper  work  is  a  terrible  strain  till  one  gets 
used  to  it.  The  ordinary  conditions  of  literary 
leisure,  pleasant  surroundings,  the  sense  of  the 
full  possession  of  your  own  soul,  are  opposed  to  it 
in  every  particular.  Fleet  Street  is  never  perfectly 
quiet  day  or  night.  Often  you  back  on  a  slum,  and 
have  to  take  a  courteous  interest  in  its  brawls. 
Slum  or  not,  the  rooms  are  usually  bare  and  comfort- 
less, and  the  sounds  and  other  interruptions  in- 
cidental to  the  work  of  the  premises  are  distracting 
until  you  have  acquired  the  second  nature  of  the 
calling.  The  too  insistent  '  devil '  who  steals 
into  your  room  every  ten  minutes  or  so  to  bring 
proofs  of  the  whole  issue  for  your  inspection  as 


278  MY  HARVEST 

they  are  pulled,  and  to  take  copy  sheet  by  sheet 
as  you  write,  is  a  bit  of  a  trial  till  you  get  used 
to  him.  The  '  reader  '  who  occasionally  descends 
from  above  to  ask  you  to  verify  a  quotation,  or  to 
suggest  an  emendation,  is  another.  Mine  was 
more  welcome,  for  he  rarely  took  his  departure 
without  offering  a  pinch  of  snuff.  The  type  is 
usually  a  venerable  person  with  a  manner  suggestive 
of  better  days  and  higher  hopes  in  the  work  of  the 
pen ;  his  out-of-the-way  erudition  is  sometimes 
quite  remarkable.  There  are  moments  when  you 
could  fain  ask  him  to  linger  and  tell  you  of  his 
past ;  but  after  all  he  is  still  one  interruption 
more.  For  another,  there  is  the  distant  but  still 
quite  audible  throb  of  the  engines,  as  a  preliminary 
to  the  work  of  going  to  press. 

Writing  is  almost  impossible  till  you  have  got 
the  better  of  these  trials,  and  you  will  never  attain 
to  the  mastery  if  you  begin  late,  or  let  yourself 
drop  out  of  training.  Poor  Davidson,  a  man  of 
letters  if  ever  there  was  one,  went  all  to  pieces 
as  a  journalist  under  a  mishap  of  the  latter  kind. 
He  once  came  to  the  office  as  a  locum  tenens  in 
holiday  time,  and  with  distressing  results.  The 
place  was  new  to  him,  the  conditions  were  dis- 
tracting, he  was  unable  to  write  a  line.  The  demon 
boy  came  and  went,  and  still  all  that  awaited  him 
was  the  sight  of  a  miserable  fellow  creature  with 
his  hands  in  his  hair,  and  a  welter  of  torn  beginnings 
on  the  floor. 

Presently,  of  course  on  information  received, 
the  editor  dropped  in  with  a  cheery  c  how  are  you 
going  on  ?  ' 


LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM      279 

Not  very  well. 

Ah,  just  the  want  of  the  habit  of  it,  but  you'll 
soon  get  used 

If  you  don't  mind,  I  think  I  won't  stay. 

"  They're  of  no  mortal  use  to  you,"  he  said,  as 
he  decamped,  with  a  handful  of  his  failures  in  his 
pocket,  "  but  they  might  come  in  handy  for  a 
novel  on  the  Press." 

The  whole  staff  is  now  mobilized  for  instant 
action  at  any  point  of  the  compass.  Speed  is  the 
first  requisite,  and  with  speed,  strangely  enough, 
has  come  more  leisure  than  of  old.  We  toiled 
through  our  task  into  the  small  hours,  often  enough 
with  midnight  for  our  starting-point.  Nowadays 
they  must  be  almost  ready  to  go  to  press  at  that 
hour,  so  as  to  have  the  paper  served  with  the  hot 
rolls,  in  most  parts  of  the  kingdom.  Mere  fast 
trains  have  long  been  superseded,  though  they 
still  play  their  part.  Much  of  it  is  wired  down  to 
branch  centres  in  the  chief  towns,  every  important 
word  winged  for  its  flight  to  the  farthest  confines 
of  the  system  as  it  falls  from  the  pen.  We  old 
stagers  had  the  sense  of  holiday,  if  we  managed 
to  get  away  before  two  in  the  morning,  when  we 
staggered  forth  to  our  cabs  at  the  door,  to  take 
a  first  instalment  of  sleep  on  the  way  home.  As 
often  as  not,  our  cabman  slept  too,  trusting  to 
Providence  and  his  own  latent  powers  for  emer- 
gencies. 

Each  of  us  had  his  own  particular  man  for  the 
drive.  I  once  took  the  liberty  of  remonstrating 
with  mine  on  the  risks  of  collision  with  the  market 
carts  taking  the  opposite  course  to  ours,  their 


280  MY  HARVEST 

drivers  wholly  regardless  of  rules  of  the  road  as 
they  lurched  in  slumber  on  their  shafts. 

"  It's  like  this,"  he  said.  "  'Ow  many  years  'ave 
I  drove  you,  and  'ave  I  ever  spilt  you  onst  ?  " 

I  had  to  leave  it  there  until  "  onst  " — I  lived 
in  Kensington  then — the  hansom  came  into 
collision  with  the  refuge  at  the  top  of  St.  James's 
Street,  and  turned  neatly  over  on  its  side.  We 
were  rescued  by  one  of  the  night  birds  always  at 
hand  in  London.  "  I  see  it  comin',"  he  said — 
"  but  I  was  a  bit  too  late ;  you  was  on  the  hobe- 
lisk  " — his  generic  name  for  anything  placed  by 
authority  in  the  middle  of  the  road — "  before  I 
could  give  your  chap  the  tip."  To  this  day, 
I  believe,  an  obelisk  in  honour  of  a  deceased 
alderman  is  still  used  as  a  refuge  in  Farringdon 
Street. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  yourself  now  ?  "  I  asked 
the  cabman. 

"  'Ow  many  years  'ave  I  drove Well,  it 

won't  'appen  again." 

And,  with  my  active  co-operation,  it  never  did. 

Strangely  enough,  though  the  glass  was  shivered 
to  fragments,  neither  of  us  was  a  penny  the  worse. 
Even  Providence  had  been  caught  napping,  but 
had  roused  itself  in  time  to  make  amends. 

His  successor  was  always  in  the  highest  spirits, 
and  whistled  all  the  way  home.  I  never  saw  a 
more  cheerful  man.  As  he  told  me  in  confidence, 
he  was  getting  on.  I  was  only  one  of  his  regular 
customers  :  "  Mr.  Phil  May — the  gentleman  what 
does  the  pictures  for  the  papers  " — was  another ; 
and  often  gave  him  a  sovereign  for  his  fare  as  he 


LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM      281 

made  the  tour  of  the  night  clubs.  "  He  starts 
just  as  you  leave  off :  you  know — '  Box  and  Cox  '  : 
you've  seen  that  I  dessay.  I'm  beginning  to  save, 
I  am  ;  and  by  and  by  I'll  buy  a  cab  and  a  gee-gee 
or  two,  and  be  my  own  master."  He  achieved 
them  bit  by  bit  and  whistled  louder  than  ever. 
Then  one  day,  while  acting  as  his  own  stableman, 
he  had  his  leg  badly  broken  by  a  kick  from  one  of 
his  horses,  and  got  lamed  for  life.  The  long  illness 
brought  him  down  with  a  run  ;  he  was  sold  up, 
and  he  had  to  decline  to  a  "  growler  "  owing  to 
the  impossibility  of  mounting  the  higher  box — 
the  growler  and  wage  servitude.  After  that  he 
whistled  no  more. 

All  so  well  and  truly  tried,  and  all  so  frustrated. 
The  mystery  of  the  luck  ! 

Sir  John  Robinson  was  the  master  of  us  all  in 
Bouverie  Street.  He  was  at  first  only  the  manager, 
though  he  afterwards  became  titular  editor.  As 
between  him  and  the  nominal  chief  it  was  long 
a  question  of  conflict  of  jurisdictions,  like  that 
between  the  Mikado  and  the  Shogun.  He  ruled 
by  suggestion,  scouring  the  news  of  the  day  for 
topics  for  Lang,  and  promoting  without  commanding 
suitable  subjects  for  the  rest.  His  pride  was  that 
he  knew  a  handy  man  when  he  saw  one,  and  an- 
nexed him  as  soon  as  he  could.  He  discovered 
Archibald  Forbes,  when  the  latter,  while  languishing 
for  a  job  equal  to  his  powers,  was  glad  to  become 
correspondent  for  The  Morning  Advertiser  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  Franco-German  war.  Our  manager 
was  still  busy  with  the  question  of  getting  him  into 
the  net,  when  one  day  up  came  his  card  for  an 


282  MY  HARVEST 

interview.  "  The  Lord  hath  delivered  him  into 
my  hand,"  muttered  Robinson,  and  he  was  engaged 
at  once.  The  result  was  the  finest  work  in  that 
branch  of  journalism  ever  seen  since  the  golden 
prime  of  Russell  of  The  Times. 

Forbes  was  an  ex-dragoon,  in  one  of  his  attributes 
as  a  rolling  stone,  and  he  never  lost  that  trace  of  his 
origin.  His  manners  were  those  of  the  barrack- 
room,  but  genius  atoned  for  all.  He  knew  how  to 
get  there,  the  supreme  gift  of  a  writer  working  in 
the  rough-and-tumble  of  war.  He  wrote,  as  they 
all  have  to  do,  sitting,  standing,  or  lying  down, 
with  a  drum-head  for  a  table,  or  at  need  the  saddle 
of  his  horse.  And  when  he  had  written  he  knew 
how  to  get  first  in  with  his  copy.  His  rivals  in  the 
field  might  be  as  quick  as  himself  with  the  pen, 
but  they  had  no  other  resource  than  to  wait  for 
the  transmission  of  their  despatches  until  the 
military  people  had  done  with  the  wires.  Forbes 
saw  a  better  way  ;  Luxemburg  was  on  the  frontier 
of  the  scene  of  fighting,  and  its  wires  were  disen- 
gaged. He  made  straight  for  that  quarter  after 
every  battle,  often  riding  all  night  to  do  it,  and 
beat  the  field.  In  work  of  this  kind,  an  hour 
sometimes  counts  in  priority,  and  four-and-twenty, 
or  even  twelve,  make  an  eternity.  He  was  ably 
seconded  at  the  office.  Robinson  slept  there  half 
the  time,  to  await  the  despatch,  and  at  need  to 
bring  it  out  at  once.  The  result  was  fame  for 
the  writer,  a  circulation  of  leaps  and  bounds  for 
the  paper — sorely  in  need  of  it — and  a  modest 
fortune  for  the  arch-contriver  in  the  managerial 
chair. 


LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM     283 

He  was  content  to  be  a  contriver,  an  efficient 
cause  to  the  last,  without  a  thought  of  the  honours 
of  notoriety.  He  knew,  and  that  was  enough  for 
him.  His  eyes  twinkling  behind  his  spectacles, 
he  sat  tight  in  his  office  chair,  and  judged  men 
and  events.  His  one  infirmity  was  that  he  never 
could  tell  where  he  had  left  the  spectacles,  after 
removing  them  but  a  moment  before.  A  smart 
lad  in  his  antechamber  found  a  vocation  that  was 
something  of  a  sinecure  in  restoring  them  to  their 
owner.  His  heart  was  as  good  as  his  head,  a  true 
friend,  a  genial  companion,  a  lover  of  the  good 
story  and  the  quip  and  crank  for  his  leisure  hour. 
If  he  had  any  other  weakness  it  was  the  belief 
that  a  diary,  which  he  had  kept  for  the  better 
part  of  his  career,  was  charged  with  secrets  of 
state  unpublishable  in  his  lifetime,  and  only 
to  be  printed  with  caution  after  his  death.  He 
seemed  to  tremble  at  the  thought  of  the  dangerous 
nature  of  its  revelations.  It  made  its  appearance 
in  due  course,  but  without  disturbing  the  peace 
of  politicians  or  even  contributing  to  the  gaiety 
of  nations  in  any  marked  way.  This  is  easily 
accounted  for.  The  secrets  of  to-day  are  the 
only  things  that  count  as  curiosity  and  wonder ; 
to-morrow  they  have  only  the  interest  of  ancient 
history.  Fresh  from  a  cabinet  minister's  room, 
Robinson  might  justly  fear  that  he  carried  high 
explosives  enough  to  ruin  a  government,  if  they 
happened  to  catch.  As  it  was,  their  too  long 
storage  in  the  magazine  of  his  diary  often  failed 
to  bring  them  to  the  flash-point  of  the  interest  of 
anecdote. 


284  MY  HARVEST 

He  was  the  first  to  use  the  wires  extensively — 
with  an  anathema  on  the  consequences.  For 
long  years  they  were  regarded  by  the  Press  as  a 
costly  luxury,  and  no  wonder  when  every  message 
was  charged  at  prohibitory  rates.  Reuter  partly 
remedied  this  in  introducing  a  system  of  joint 
service  for  matters  of  common  interest.  He  saw 
that,  in  many  things,  what  would  serve  for  one 
paper  might  serve  as  well  for  a  hundred,  with  a 
consequent  cheapening  to  the  customers. 

Robinson  had  a  good  story  of  the  way  in  which 
the  enterprise  was  launched  in  this  country.  Reuter 
went  to  The  Daily  News  as  to  the  other  leading 
papers,  with  an  offer  of  copious  and  trustworthy 
telegrams  from  abroad  on  this  plan. 

The  manager  naturally  asked  for  terms. 

"  Nothing,"  said  Reuter,  genially,  and  I  believe 
sounding  it  with  a  "  d." 

"  Come  !  come  !  that  will  never  do — what  do 
you  expect  to  get  out  of  it  ?  5! 

"  The  esteem  of  the  British  people,  whom  I 
admire." 

"  Humph  !   you  may  send  'em  in." 

They  came,  they  were  worth  printing,  and 
they  duly  appeared  on  those  extraordinary  terms 
in  every  important  journal.  At  the  end  of  the 
year  they  had  become  indispensable,  and  then 
the  philanthropist  called  again. 

You  like  my  little  telegrams  ? 

Undoubtedly. 

Well,  I  want  to  arrange  about  going  on  with 
them. 

Very  pleased,  I  am  sure. 


LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM      285 

My  terms  are  a  thousand  a  year. 

Whew  !  that's  a  very  different  story  from  the 
one  you 

"  Ah  !  "  said  the  other  quietly,  "  we  are  talking 
business  now." 

And  he  got  his  thousand  all  round.  To  refuse 
would  have  been  to  have  given  priority  to  a  host 
of  rivals. 

No  wonder  the  capitalist  has  learned  to  think 
himself  indispensable  to  the  Press,  when  every 
new  departure  involves  expenditure  at  this  rate. 
When  I  see  how  the  newspaper  is  staffed,  from 
the  commissioner  at  the  door  to  the  editor  in  his 
shrine,  I  think  with  awe  of  the  bewildering  frac- 
tion of  the  incoming  ha'penny,  even  with  the 
grant  in  aid,  of  the  advertisements,  for  the 
average  share.  The  hundreds  who  want  their 
mite  !  The  huge  sub-editorial  staff ;  the  clouds  of 
skirmishing  reporters  and  interviewers  ;  the  illus- 
trators, caricaturists,  cartographers,  and  printers ; 
the  resident  correspondents  abroad  in  their  costly 
offices,  to  say  nothing  of  the  specials  at  the  front 
with  their  mounts  and  their  motor-cars.  With 
that  all  the  agency  of  distribution,  from  Smith 
and  Son  down  to  the  urchin  who  calls  his  wares 
in  the  street,  and  the  goody  at  the  chandler's  shop 
who  works  them  in  with  the  bacon  and  the  brandy 
balls.  The  head  spins  with  it,  as  under  some 
new  illustration  of  the  problem  of  the  indivisibility 
of  matter.  Is  there  no  chance  for  the  mere  human 
being  with  the  sense  of  a  message,  and  nothing  in 
his  pocket  ? 

In  such  difficulties  one  takes  to  day-dreaming 


286  MY  HARVEST 

as  the  only  resource.  I  have  done  that  in  one  of 
my  books  where  I  imagine  a  man  with  little  more 
in  the  way  of  worldly  gear  than  what  he  stands 
upright  in,  yet  determined  to  try  his  luck  as  a 
founder.  He  fastens  on  a  neighbourhood  of  mean 
streets,  and  resolves  to  tell  the  truth  about  it  for 
good  and  ill — his  premises  a  back  garret ;  his 
plant  a  cheap  duplicating  machine  for  manuscript. 
Nothing  of  public  moment  in  that  neighbourhood 
escapes  him,  in  its  crimes,  vices,  labours,  privations, 
heroisms — the  home,  the  gin-shop,  the  charitable 
agencies,  too  often  with  their  spurns  that  patient 
merit  of  the  unworthy  takes  from  the  underlings 
at  their  gates,  the  district  visitors,  the  parson  on 
the  prowl  for  souls.  Well,  he  makes  that  microcosm 
hum  ;  and  presently  his  single  sheet  at  a  ha'penny 
— or  at  the  price  of  a  farthing  epic,  if  you  like — 
becomes  a  second  necessary  of  life  to  many  of  its 
inmates,  and  to  an  ever-widening  circle  of  the 
great  world  outside,  to  whom  he  sends  it  free  for 
a  time  on  probation.  It  is  a  dead  loss  at  first, 
but  what  with  his  dietary  of  oatmeal  and 
potatoes,  and  his  soul  never  failing  in  its  purpose, 
it  slowly  begins  to  pay  out-of-pocket  expenses. 
The  next  stage  is  a  fount  of  broken  type,  and  a 
handpress.  By  and  by,  still  with  all  the  serious 
labours  of  production  and  distribution  manipu- 
lated on  the  system  of  a  one-man  show,  he  feels 
justified  in  adding  an  urchin  to  the  staff.  The 
daring  of  it,  the  individuality,  is  the  charm ;  it 
is  at  least  a  voice  in  our  wilderness  and  no  echo. 
After  a  while  the  big  brothers,  the  leviathans  of 
the  ordinary  issues,  get  wind  of  it  and  write  it  up 


LITERATURE  AND  JOURNALISM     287 

as  a  jest,  if  only  in  the  hope  of  writing  it  down. 
The  sociologist  looks  in  to  inquire  ;  the  circulation 
widens,  the  front  garret  is  added  to  the  back,  and 
so  until  a  gas  engine  rises  to  the  occasion,  and 
finally  with  the  help  of  a  whole  battery  of  Hoes, 
all  bought  out  of  profits,  we  attain  to  a  largest 
circulation,  on  the  pure  merits  of  our  leading 
contributor,  Truthful  James,  with  never  a  trick 
of  the  trade  to  help  us  out.  Our  office  lamp  has 
become  the  brightest  thing  on  the  orb,  and  is 
distinctly  recognizable  from  the  Milky  Way. 

The  rich  investor  may  look  in  if  he  likes,  but 
only  with  his  ha'penny  for  his  copy,  and,  by  pre- 
ference, his  hat  in  his  hand.  All  his  millions  will 
never  buy  an  interest  in  it,  in  the  sense  of  a  directing 
voice.  The  idea  is  that  there  may  be  as  good  a 
chance  as  ever  for  the  small  man,  if  he  knows  how 
to  set  to  work.  The  older  and  the  better  way  was 
to  end  with  capital,  not  to  begin  with  it ;  it  is  a 
mere  hot-water  bottle  at  the  best. 

My  dream  is  out.  To  make  no  secret  of  it,  I 
came  to  London  to  do  something  like  this,  but  I 
wasn't  man  enough  for  the  job.  The  poor  com- 
promise of  John  Street  was  all  that  remained. 


CHAPTER    XX 

CLUBS 

MEN'S  clubs  are  the  milestones  of  their  life 
course,  but  it  is  as  well  to  wait  to  the  last 
before  you  judge  the  career.  The  old-fashioned 
way  was  to  begin  with  the  Bohemian,  go  on  to  the 
Respectable,  and  thence,  if  it  could  be  managed, 
to  the  Ineffable  of  Pall  Mall. 

I  knew  The  Savage  in  its  mellowest,  and  to  my 
mind,  most  delightful  hour  when  it  was  in  the 
large  room  under  the  Piazza  at  Covent  Garden. 
Its  second  stage  was  the  Savoy.  In  its  third  and 
present  at  Adelphi  Terrace,  I  was  not  a  member, 
but  only  an  occasional  guest. 

The  Whitefriars,  never  more  than  a  dining  club, 
was  my  middle  course.  It  had  its  day  in  Bohemia, 
but  reorganized  as  it  is  now,  it  is  something  of  a 
debating  society  tempered  by  a  dinner.  There  is 
a  subject  for  discussion,  and  a  "  celebrity,"  usually 
from  the  outside,  as  the  opener.  Its  only  blemish 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  is  that  it  is  sometimes  a 
little  too  improving  for  the  mind,  to  the  exclusion 
of  all  chance  of  exchanging  a  word  with  one's 
neighbour.  Every  human  being  is  a  speech-maker, 
under  suitable  conditions — the  platform,  the  chim- 
ney corner,  the  tea-table,  or  the  smoking-room. 
Few,  however,  are  able  to  respond  with  perfect 

288 


CLUBS  289 

self-possession  to  the  call  of  "legs."  The  Club  of 
Boswell's  mighty  theme  must  still  be  our  best 
model  for  all  time.  It  was  an  age  of  conversation, 
and  the  subject  settled  itself  by  natural  selection. 
Think  of  Johnson  or  Burke  brought  to  his  feet  by 
a  tap  from  a  sturdy  hammerman  in  the  chair,  and 
limited  to  five  minutes  for  his  course.  The  pro- 
ceedings moved  at  their  own  sweet  will,  and  their 
no  order,  which  was  order  in  the  highest,  carried 
with  it  the  possibility  of  both  the  grave  and  the 
gay.  When  the  heavy  lead  threatened  to  be  too 
ponderous,  there  was  always  Goldsmith  at  hand 
with  his  quip,  or  story,  addled  in  the  hatching,  like 
his  masterpiece  in  the  riddle  of  the  peas  and 
Turnham  Green.  On  rare  occasions  we  have  been 
blessed  in  this  way  at  the  'Friars.  I  hope  I  shall 
never  forget  the  evening  when  Max  O'Rell  was  in 
the  chair,  and  Rapson,  the  great  Orientalist,  then 
at  the  British  Museum,  now  an  Oxford  professor, 
was  the  guest  of  the  evening.  At  the  Museum  he 
belonged  to  the  department  of  Coins  and  Medals ; 
and  O'Rell  wanted  to  say  something  nice  about  him 
as  a  numismatist.  With  his  imperfect  knowledge  of 
the  niceties  of  our  tongue,  he  could  manage  it  only 
in  this  way :  "  Gentlemen,  we  are  honoured  to-night 

with  the   presence   of  a  well-known   coiner " 

The  rest  was  lost  in  an  inevitable  roar,  with  Rapson 
as  the  loudest  contributor.  O'Rell  tried  to  join  in 
the  merriment,  but  he  was  too  late;  it  had  evidently 
caught  him  unawares. 

These  difficulties  have  lately  suggested  to  some 
few  lovers  of  the  older  model  a  Fireside  Club; 
limited  in  numbers  to  a  round  dozen,  and  without 


290  MY  HARVEST 

a  programme  of  any  sort.  We  have  good  talk — 
mainly  about  our  common  shop  of  the  arts,  in 
their  setting  of  the  incidents  of  the  time.  For 
perfection  in  this  line  you  must  have  the  round 
table :  anything  with  corners  favours  button- 
holing and  particularism.  We  are  working  up  to 
that  piece  of  furniture,  but  it  is  no  easy  thing  to 
find  in  sufficient  size.  We  were  after  the  very  last 
in  Wardour  Street,  when  it  was  snapped  up  by  a 
gang  of  politicians.  You  could  have  played  cricket 
on  it.  It  was  a  beauty,  and  it  bore  a  mark  which, 
the  vendor  assured  us,  was  that  of  the  cabinet- 
maker to  the  Royal  Family  at  Camelot.  We  had 
our  revenge  ;  they  never  met  but  to  disagree  :  such 
tables  are  not  for  the  likes  o'  them. 

A  thing  not  to  be  forgotten  is  that  the  clubs 
change  with  the  times.  The  Savage  is  not  what  it 
was,  for  one  reason  no  doubt  because  it  is  some- 
thing better.  One  venerable  survivor  of  the  mem- 
bership of  my  day  is  now  a  model  of  all  the  proprie- 
ties, and,  for  aught  I  know  to  the  contrary,  sings 
canticles.  At  the  Garrick,  the  stock-broker  is  no 
longer  a  pariah. 

The  Reform  Club,  when  I  joined,  was  in  its  old 
age.  It  had  outlived  the  almost  revolutionary 
impulses  of  its  origin,  and  had  cooled  far  more 
rapidly  than  the  globe.  Its  typical  member  was 
very  well  satisfied  with  reforms  as  they  stood,  on 
the  conviction  that  there  had  been  change  enough 
to  last  as  long  as  the  eyesight  of  healthy  vision. 
Its  still  more  typical  group  sat  for  luncheon  at  a 
small  table  that  just  held  five  for  comfort,  Robin- 
son, James  Payn  and  Black  the  novelists,  "  Joe  " 


CLUBS  291 

Parkinson,  and  Wemyss  Reid.  If  there  happened 
to  be  a  vacant  place,  and  it  was  rashly  appropriated 
by  an  unwary  freshman,  the  head  waiter  looked 
troubled,  while  the  others  sent  the  intruder,  or, 
at  need,  themselves,  to  Coventry  forthwith.  I 
once  made  this  deplorable  mistake,  and  never  felt 
more  uncomfortable  in  my  life.  They  had  all  voted 
for  me,  and  were  extremely  cordial  in  individual 
encounter,  but  they  seemed  to  feel  that  the  great 
Reform  Bill  itself  drew  the  line  at  social  conven- 
tions. It  was  all  right  with  them,  and  I  am  sure 
they  most  sincerely  hoped  it  was  so  with  everybody 
else.  After  luncheon  they  either  ministered  to 
Payn's  almost  guilty  passion  for  a  rubber,  or  took 
— still  reserved — seats  round  the  fire  in  the  smok- 
ing-room. The  programme  was  as  fixed  and  in- 
variable as  the  rest.  Payn  cut  biting  jests  at  Robin- 
son's expense,  while  his  victim,  who  idolized  him 
for  his  humour,  winced,  yet  still  chuckled  with  the 
thought  of  his  fine  form.  Black  told  the  latest 
story  :  "  Bang  gaed  a  saxpence,"  I  believe,  made 
its  first  appearance  in  London  at  this  institution. 
So  did  : 

Ten  little  niggers  drinking  sherry  wine, 

One  tasted  So-and-So's  and  then  there  were  nine. 

Parkinson  stood  for  the  humour  of  the  man 
about  town.  His  was  a  curious  history.  He  began 
as  a  civil  servant  of  the  old  days  of  leisure,  and 
doubled  the  part  as  one  of  Charles  Dickens's  young 
men,  writing  many  a  paper  for  Household  Words. 
This  served  to  launch  him  in  journalism,  and  he 
joined  the  staff  of  The  Daily  News  as  a  descriptive 
writer.  In  the  course  of  his  duties  it  fell  to  his  lot 


292  MY  HARVEST 

to  describe  the  laying  of  an  Atlantic  cable.  The 
chief  contractor  was  on  the  cable-ship,  with  his 
charming  daughter ;  and  Joe,  as  one  of  the  finest 
young  fellows  of  the  day,  made  such  good  use  of 
his  time  that,  at  the  end  of  the  voyage  the  young 
people  threw  themselves  at  the  feet  of  the  astonished 
sire,  to  ask  his  blessing  on  their  engagement.  They 
were  met  by  a  flat  refusal.  The  parent  had  risen 
from  the  ranks  by  mother  wit  and  character.  His 
daughter's  distress  touched  him  with  the  second 
thoughts  that  are  best,  among  them  the  considera- 
tion that  Joe  might  be  a  catch  in  his  way.  After 
all  he  was  an  educated  man  of  winning  manners, 
and  his  accomplishments  would  be  useful  on  the 
Board  of  Directors.  The  match  was  made,  very 
much  to  the  advantage  of  both  sides.  Joe  rose  to 
his  opportunities,  became  a  capitalist,  and  had  a 
son  in  the  Guards.  If  there  is  any  way  of  going 
beyond  that  in  aspiration,  I  should  like  to  hear 
of  it. 

He  was  a  great  authority  on  eating  and  drink- 
ing ;  and  he  and  his  bosom  friend  Edmund  Yates 
rendered  each  other  a  strange  kind  of  mutual 
service  in  studies  of  that  sort.  They  were  mighty 
diners-out,  but  they  knew  the  risk,  especially  at 
public  dinners.  Who  was  to  answer  for  the  wines  ? 
It  was  therefore  agreed  between  them  that  each 
should  alternately  make  the  first  experiment,  so 
that  if  anything  went  amiss,  there  might  be  one 
survivor.  The  taster  of  the  hour  sipped,  while  his 
friend  waited  and  watched ;  and  according  to  his 
nod  or  shake  of  the  head,  the  other  fell  to  or 
abstained. 


CLUBS  293 

Yates  was  not  of  the  club,  but  Parkinson  often 
served  that  institution,  in  much  the  same  way. 
He  excogitated  new  dishes,  and  tried  them  with 
the  help  of  a  chosen  band.  Once,  when  there  hap- 
pened to  be  much  talk  of  the  simple  life,  they 
attempted  a  dinner  from  a  bill  of  fare  of  our  fore- 
fathers preserved  in  that  curious  book  Walker's 
Original.  It  consisted  I  believe  of  a  little  fish,  a 
little  roast,  with  a  remove  of  game,  a  tart  and  a 
kickshaw.  They  saw  their  great  man  in  the 
kitchen  about  it  :  and  entering  heartily  into  the 
project  he  did  his  best.  But  when  they  had  finished, 
all  had  to  join  in  sorrowful  confession  that  they 
had  not  dined.  The  Reform  survives  in  the  repu- 
tation of  its  cookery  ;  and  in  other  respects  it  may 
easily  boast  of  going  one  more  on  the  Carlton  next 
door. 

In  striking  contrast  to  these  there  was  occa- 
sionally the  august  figure  of  John  Bright,  less  in 
its  effect  and  actual  presence  than  a  memory  of  an 
earlier  and  a  greater  time.  After  his  split  with  the 
Liberal  Party  on  the  question  of  Home  Rule,  he 
seemed  to  sit  in  a  proud  isolation  of  his  own 
choosing,  for  there  were  plenty  to  bear  him  com- 
pany. His  appearance  seemed  to  call  the  smoking- 
room  to  order,  and  he  often  came  and  went  without 
other  companionship  than  his  paper  and  his  cigar. 

"Labby"  was  another  member  of  note,  though 
towards  the  latter  end  of  his  career  his  favourite 
resort  was  rather  that  club  of  all  clubs,  under  the 
clock  tower  at  Westminster.  Here,  especially 
when  he  was  playing  the  part  of  Achilles  in  his  tent, 
after  the  tiff  with  Mr  Gladstone,  he  was  the  life 


294  MY  HARVEST 

and  soul  of  the  place.  His  cynical  humour  found 
vent  in  teaching  the  young  Tories,  who  adored  him, 
how  to  put  spokes  in  the  wheel  of  the  Liberal 
machine.  "  What  are  you  fellows  about  ?  Why 
don't  you  ask  a  question  about — so  and  so — and 
floor  the  lot  ?  "  When  he  heard  a  good  story 
against  the  Government  he  would  croak  gleefully  : 
"  I  must  go  and  tell  that  to  my  cobblers  at  North- 
ampton " — who  adored  him  to  the  end. 

The  National  Liberal  was  my  next  stage,  in 
political  clubs.  Of  this,  again,  one  may  say  "  it 
moves,"  as  a  register  of  the  heart-beats  of  Radical 
England. 

The  most  interesting  clubs  of  another  kind  are 
those  like  the  Omar  Khayyam,  of  which  you  hear 
very  little  beyond  the  walls.  It  dines  once  a 
quarter  or  so,  pays  homage,  rubrical  and  poetic, 
to  the  Master,  and  then  makes  haste  to  forget  him 
in  talk  about  things  in  general,  flavoured  by  a  sort 
of  ritualistic  humour  generally  turning  on  the  mis- 
deeds of  the  committee  or  of  particular  members. 
This  imports  a  butt,  and  that  office  is  filled  by  a 
genial  victim  now  almost  the  titular  holder.  Many 
men,  well  known  in  science,  the  arts,  the  higher 
Civil  Service  and  what  not,  meet  here  to  unbend. 
The  proceedings  are  brought  into  keeping  with  the 
philosophy  of  the  Eastern  teacher  by  a  tone  of 
genial  pessimism  that  runs  all  through.  Whence 
and  Whither  ?  Who  knows  ?  But  since  you  are 
here,  you  can't  do  better  than  make  the  best  of  it. 
"  A  cup  of  wine,"  at  least,  to  cheer  us ;  if  not 
"  Thou !  " 

A  curious  club  that  is  still  not  a  club  is  to  be 


CLUBS  295 

found  in  a  sort  of  movable  feast,  held  once  a  year, 
by  a  loving  disciple  of  the  author  of  Erewhon.  It 
convenes  only  just  as  the  spirit  moves  the  disciple 
to  call  writers  and  others  together  to  talk  on  Butler 
and  his  work.  It  has  some  affinity  with  those 
Chinese  committees  whose  business  it  is  to  promote 
deserving  persons  to  a  post  among  the  constella- 
tions. The  idea  is  that  Butler  was  a  great  fore- 
runner and  pathfinder  in  the  realism  of  modern 
literature,  and  that  if  you  sweep  the  poet's  corner 
of  the  skies  assiduously,  you  will  find  him  seated 
there  in  his  immortality  of  glory.  I  have  heard 
very  good  speaking  at  this  board. 

The  English  clubs,  as  a  rule,  differ  from  the 
French  in  one  important  point.  Ours  tends  to 
give  you  only  the  raw  material  of  association — a 
place  to  meet  in — and  to  eat  in,  leaving  the  rest 
to  take  care  of  itself.  The  French  club  generally 
feels  bound  to  provide  also  the  means  of  amuse- 
ment. I  take  as  a  type  the  Union  Artistique — the 
Mirlitons  for  short — most  French  clubs  have  a 
nickname.  It  is  for  artists  and  men  of  letters,  but 
that  is  only  the  beginning  of  it.  What  are  you 
going  to  do  with  them  and  for  them  when  they  are 
on  your  hands  ?  Hence  endless  devices  and  an 
overworked  committee — plays  in  a  properly  ap- 
pointed bijou  theatre,  written,  staged  and  acted 
by  members,  except  for  the  contingent  of  leading 
actresses  from  the  outside  ;  exhibitions  of  pictures 
painted  by  members,  concerts  staffed  by  members, 
lectures,  dances,  and  so  on.  The  fogey  has  to  be 
pretty  smart  sometimes  to  get  his  chance  of  a 
nap. 


296  MY  HARVEST 

In  my  day  you  found  the  British  model  at  the 
old  Union,  where  they  had  played  whist  daily  since 
the  time  of  Talleyrand.  Their  cold  shoulder — not 
of  mutton  but  of  manners — might  almost  have  put 
the  Athenaeum  to  shame. 

The  two  national  styles  in  club  fellowship  are 
just  as  sharply  contrasted  in  eating  and  drinking. 
How  feebly  does  an  ordinary  British  club  rise  to 
its  opportunities  with  the  potato.  We  know  the 
infinite  variety  of  the  French  genius,  in  its  applica- 
tion to  the  treatment  of  this  vegetable.  As  for 
green  things,  who  but  an  Englishman  could  have 
achieved  the  almost  savage  simplicity  of  boiled 
cabbage  in  slabs  ? — perhaps  the  true  reading  for 
Nebuchadnezzar's  grass  of  the  field,  though  as- 
suredly importing  no  mitigation  of  his  punishment. 
I  once  saw  this  delicacy  offered  to  a  Frenchman  at 
an  English  table.  His  merci-non  was  the  most 
decisive  utterance  I  ever  heard  in  my  life.  Our 
clubs  for  ladies  are  leading  the  way  with  a  daintier 
fare,  within  the  limit  of  their  means. 


CHAPTER    XXI 
SALONS 

fTlHE  mid- Victorian  drawing-room  is  becoming  a 
JL  salon  and  it  will  be  all  the  better  for  the  change. 
People  may  now  meet  to  talk  about  the  things 
that  are  really  in  their  minds.  I  could  name  a 
dozen  places  of  this  sort,  but  it  would  be  a  misuse 
of  the  limelight  of  publicity.  The  hostess  keeps 
up  with  the  intellectual  movements  of  the  day, 
and  her  pace  in  this  proceeding  never  betrays  the 
uniform  of  the  blue  stocking.  People  drop  in  by 
contrivance  of  a  kind,  but  it  is  understood  that 
they  meet  for  no  chronicle  of  small  beer.  There  is 
even  a  subject — so  much  of  purpose  enters  into  it 
— though  pains  are  taken  to  keep  the  note  of  easy 
conversation.  We  have  still  higher  things  to  rise 
to  by  letting  the  subject  determine  itself  by  natural 
selection,  as  in  the  French  model.  The  first  con- 
dition is  an  instinctive  sympathy  with  the  things 
that  count.  This,  in  spontaneous  utterance, 
prompted  if  you  like  by  the  mere  news  of  the  day, 
will  do  the  rest.  Julie  de  Lespinasse,  we  may  be 
sure,  and  Madame  du  Deffand  had  no  syllabus ; 
Hume  or  Alembert  dropped  in,  and  the  rest 
occurred.  The  old  coffee-houses  of  our  Augustan 
age  were  our  nearest  approach  to  it,  but  they  were 

297 


298  MY  HARVEST 

limited  to  the  men  :  there  can  be  no  true  concert 
without  the  woman's  note.  It  is  certain  that 
Addison,  for  one,  wanted  to  introduce  it ;  he  says 
so  almost  in  terms. 

The  best  I  know  in  this  kind,  and  here  I  must, 
if  only  by  way  of  exception,  depart  from  my  rule 
of  naming  no  names,  has  long  been  the  salon  of 
the  Meynells.  It  is  a  whole  family  of  letters.  The 
father,  while  the  surest  judge  of  ways  and  means 
in  that  art  in  all  London,  sometimes  in  his  passion 
for  brevity  does  less  than  full  justice  to  his  subject 
and  his  own  powers.  The  mother  belongs  to  the 
public,  in  spite  of  herself,  by  virtue  of  her  work, 
and  of  a  native  distinction  which  has  made  her  a 
representative  woman.  She  has  written  but  too 
little,  for  all  of  it  bears  the  stamp  of  a  highly  cul- 
tured mind,  and  of  the  cosmopolitanism  of  wide 
sympathies.  Her  youth,  and  that  of  her  brilliant 
sister,  the  painter  of  The  Roll  Call,  was  spent  in 
Italy ;  and  her  knowledge  of  Italian  literature 
and  Italian  life  makes  her  as  much  at  home  in 
Rome  as  in  London,  or  for  that  matter  in  Boston 
of  the  Americans. 

She  was  the  muse  of  Coventry  Patmore  in  his 
old  age,  in  that  stage  of  his  life  a  poet  pretty  hard  to 
please  with  other  people's  work.  To  be  fair  to  him 
he  could  at  times  be  as  hard  on  his  own.  "  My  only 
poem  that  reached  the  great  heart  of  the  people," 
he  laughed  one  day,  "  was  published  in  a  comic 
paper  (Judy  I  think)  at  the  time  of  the  Franco- 
Prussian  war  of  the  'seventies.  The  King  of  Prussia 
was  sending  such  pious  telegrams  to  his  wife  on  the 
slaughter  of  the  French  battlefields  that  it  was 


SALONS  299 

impossible  to  refrain."    And  he  solemnly  declaimed, 
as  memory  serves,  in  these  terms  : 

Oh,  just  to  say,  my  dear  Augusta, 
We've  had  another  awful  buster, 
Ten  thousand  Frenchmen  sent  below : 
Praise  God  from  whom  all  blessings  flow  ! 

Everybody  knew  the  jingle :  till  then,  I,  for  one, 
never  knew  him  for  the  author. 

That  fastidious  contact,  I  have  often  thought, 
was  rather  unfortunate  for  Mrs.  Meynell.  It 
accounted  for  a  certain  touch  of  preciosity  in  her 
occasional  judgments  which  led  to  the  exclusion 
of  Grey's  Elegy  from  her  anthology  of  English 
verse — on  the  ground,  I  think,  of  its  4  obviousness.' 
Yet  what  has  made  it  obvious  but  the  universality 
of  appeal,  which  has  also  made  it  the  common 
possession  of  our  race  ?  For  the  same  reason  The 
Lord's  Prayer  labours  under  exactly  the  same  dis- 
advantage. The  Elegy  is  the  true  psalm  of  life  of 
the  heroic  soul ;  cast  in  a  classic  mould  because  it 
imports  the  attitude  of  that  soul  towards  the  human 
lot,  in  its  measured  and  restrained  melancholy,  its 
fine  sense  of  the  tears  of  things. 

It  was,  I  believe,  the  great  Smelfungus  of  our 
time,  who  found  Jaques  on  the  seven  ages  of  man, 
and  Hamlet  in  the  soliloquy  a  trifle  commonplace, 
and  was  good  enough  to  suggest  improvements  on 
the  lines  of  a  Fabian  tract. 

The  Meynells  brought  out  the  poet  Francis 
Thomson,  not  as  a  show,  but  as  a  friend  of  the 
family,  who  was  to  be  met  there  because  he  was 
long  in  the  family  care.  They  found  him  by  pure 
accident  in  the  lowest  depths  of  the  London 


300  MY  HARVEST 

Bohemia,  tended  him,  gave  him  the  sense  of  what 
was  due  to  himself.  The  story  is  well  known.  He 
was  earning  his  night's  lodging  as  a  cab-tout  at  the 
doors  of  a  theatre,  but  something  told  them  that 
here  was  a  genius  who  only  wanted  mothering  and 
mending  to  take  his  place  in  the  firmament.  A 
copy  of  Homer  in  the  original,  peeping  from  a 
pocket, — both  dog's  eared — first  gave  them  pause. 
This  led  to  his  identification  as  the  author  of  a 
poem  printed  in  a  magazine  under  their  editorship, 
with  no  particular  clue  to  the  circumstances  of  the 
author.  His  connection  with  them  was,  at  the 
beginning,  so  much  a  family  matter  that  for  some 
time  he  was  content  with  one  theme,  his  hostess 
and  her  children.  When  he  wanted  to  write  about 
angels,  he  had  nothing  to  do  but  single  out  '  Prue  ' 
and  4  Dimpling,'  and  fit  them  with  wings — always 
most  felicitously  to  measure.  When  his  erratic 
ways  threatened  to  make  him  a  little  unmanageable 
they  sent  him  to  a  monastery  for  safe  keeping.  I 
have  seen  him,  in  custody  of  one  of  the  fathers  in 
frock  and  cord,  brought  back  to  town  for  a  few 
days'  probation,  and  frolicking  it  in  glorious  talk 
on  their  hearth-rug.  He  passes  to  immortality,  but 
Chesterton  is  still  there  to  take  his  place  with  talk 
even  finer  than  his  writing,  and  others  of  mark  to 
make  a  House  for  him,  if  one  cared  to  name  them. 
This  is  the  salon  in  its  perfection,  the  symposium 
with  the  nectar  of  high  thought  for  its  circling 
draughts. 

Not  that  other  beverage  is  entirely  neglected. 
You  sup  there,  if  you  get  the  chance,  but  in  the 
homely  way  of  the  cold  joint  in  cut,  the  salad,  and 


SALONS  801 

the  sweet  which  just  serve,  like  the  banquets  in  the 
Iliad,  to  put  away  from  you  the  desire  of  eating  and 
drinking,  as  a  hindrance  to  the  flow  of  soul.  The 
daughters,  married  or  single,  are  the  Hebes  of  the 
occasion,  aided  at  will  by  the  guests  themselves. 
To  show  that  you  love  your  opposite  neighbour  as 
yourself,  you  have  but  to  pass  a  dish  to  him  across 
the  long  narrow  table,  which  recalls  the  Millais 
picture  of  the  feast  in  The  Pot  of  Basil  that  tells 
no  small  part  of  the  story. 

In  all  things  they  live  their  lives  exactly  in  their 
own  way,  and  that  I  suppose  is  the  only  royal  road 
to  originality.  One  of  the  boys  who  has  a  taste 
for  '  curios  '  has  established  himself  in  what  he 
calls  a  Serendipity  Shop,  on  the  suggestion  of 
Horace  Walpole's  precious  coinage  of  a  word  for 
the  people  who  are  constantly  finding  valuable 
articles  by  chance.  Another  is  at  Oxford  and  doing 
well.  Olive  is  for  art.  Their  modest  "  place  "  in 
Sussex  for  occasional  retreat  from  the  worries  of 
town  is  a  family  settlement.  They  have  bought 
a  bit  of  land  at  a  proper  distance  from  the  railway 
station,  and  dotted  it  with  cottages  for  parents 
and  children.  As  the  latter  reach  maturity  and 
housekeeping  on  their  own  account,  a  new  home- 
stead is  added  to  the  compound,  far  enough  for 
privacy  and  perfect  freedom,  near  enough  to  link 
itself  with  the  parental  foundation  at  the  heart 
of  it  by  the  smoke  from  its  roof.  They  dine  in 
common,  or  the  other  way,  just  as  the  fancy  takes 
them.  The  infants  are  the  principal  go-betweens, 
scampering  to  and  fro  to  keep  the  company  well 
posted  in  its  domestic  news  by  a  wireless  of  their 


302  MY  HARVEST 

own.  It  is  the  life  of  the  clan  in  a  new  setting 
suited  to  our  time. 

Here  '  Prue,'  for  intimacy,  Viola  for  the  Regis- 
trar-General, now  writes  her  books.  They  are  so 
full  of  the  country  and  of  fine  observation  of  all  its 
phases  and  its  moods  that  I  can  but  suspect  as 
much.  It  is  a  new  departure  in  the  literature  of 
fiction.  They  are  wholly  unlike  anything  else,  but 
that  is  nothing  :  so  are  many  poor  books.  These 
make  a  category  for  themselves. 

The  charm,  I  think,  comes  of  a  simplicity,  anxious 
to  make  a  meaning  clear,  and  therefore  more  or 
less  innocent  of  conscious  art  in  the  way  of  putting 
it,  or  guilty  of  it  only  in  the  sense  of  its  own  short- 
comings. It  is  the  shrewd  saying  with  no  thought 
of  the  epigram.  With  this  an  equally  extreme  sim- 
plicity in  the  theme.  A  man  or  two,  a  maid  or  two, 
in  a  medium  of  uneventful  events — a  word  spoken, 
as  often  as  not,  unspoken,  a  commonplace  of 
greeting  with  its  intonation  in  the  wrong  place. 
A  walk,  a  drive,  a  shower — anything  will  do,  even 
tea,  yet  with  this,  perhaps,  before  you  know  any- 
thing about  it,  a  storm  of  the  first  magnitude  at 
the  bottom  of  the  cup.  Taken  altogether,  an 
anatomy  of  the  nerve  system  of  the  woman  soul, 
and  this  not  in  its  eccentricities  but  in  its  law. 
The  plot,  such  as  it  is  from  the  ordinary  novel 
reader's  point  of  view,  moves  on  lines  of  emotion, 
not  on  lines  of  action  ;  the  characters  are  anything 
that  God  has  made,  and  the  writer  happens  to 
have  met.  One  hero  was  a  mere  diver  by  trade, 
but  when  his  time  had  come,  and  quite  in  the  way 
of  business,  he  made  a  plunge  that  carried  with  it 


SALONS  303 

all  the  tragedy  of  a  dip  into  the  Maelstrom.  One 
heroine,  a  servant  wench,  is  yet  of  the  household 
of  Lear.  Another,  lady-help  to  a  man  of  letters, 
while  never  missing  a  post  or  failing  to  verify  a 
quotation,  nurses  a  soul  of  fire.  All  the  drawing 
in  it  is  like  the  drawing  of  the  new  art,  done,  not 
with  the  pencil  in  lines,  but  with  the  brush  in 
colours.  Genius  in  a  word,  and  as  its  only  begetter 
little  Prue,  who  but  the  other  day  might  have  been 
tossed  in  a  railway  rug,  for  want  of  a  blanket,  by 
the  author  of  The  Hound  of  Heaven.  What  are  you 
to  say  about  it — heredity,  environment,  eugenical 
evolution — fiddle-de-dee  !  Say  nothing,  but  take 
it  as  you  find  it  and  ask  for  more. 

One  sometimes  gets  a  bit  cross  with  her,  for  all 
that,  Columbine,  the  latest  as  yet,  quite  fine  down 
to  the  last  page  but  one — then,  if  you  please,  a 
fresh  start  in  misunderstandings,  a  fresh  shuffle 
and  cut  for  the  choice  of  affinities,  and  the  whole 
business  started  all  over  again,  and  not  even 
written  for  the  distracted  reader,  but  left  to  him 
to  work  out  in  nightmares.  The  mind  reels  under 
4  their  will  and  their  won't '  till  they  begin  to  sug- 
gest nothing  more  edifying  than  another  breed 
from  Mars.  Human  souls  ought  not  to  be  handled 
in  such  a  way  as  to  suggest  arguments  against  the 
abuses  of  vivisection.  Can  it  be  a  new  terror  of 
the  obvious  in  her  mother's  child  ? 


CHAPTER  XXII 

FAITHS  AND  UNFAITHS 

"VTOTHING  is  barred  now  in  mere  discussion. 
JL  i  There  is  quite  a  run  on  the  faiths  that  tend 
to  make  religion  rather  a  philosophy  than  an 
ethic,  and  to  give  conduct  its  only  imperative  in 
the  social  proprieties. 

The  newspapers  take  up  religion  as  a  feature  ; 
the  public  is  circularised  in  its  thousands,  with 
posers  on  the  problems — the  solutions,  to  be 
published,  with  or  without  your  portrait,  but 
with  your  autograph  to  oblige,  for  the  facsimile. 
Mrs.  Besant,  caught  on  the  wing  to  or  from  India, 
gives  us  a  kind  of  paraphrase  on  '  all  for  the  best 
in  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds,'  as  a  new  setting 
of  the  Theosophic  confession  of  faith.  Mr.  Maske- 
lyne,  labelled  as  '  doyen  of  conjurers,'  gets  in  a 
dig  at  that  confession.  It  will  be  woe  to  evildoers 
in  the  next  world,  he  thinks,  especially  "for  those, 
who  for  the  sake  of  gain,  concoct  new  religions, 
and  set  up  false  Christs  and  mythical  Mahatmas 
to  impose  upon  and  rob  the  unwary."  It  might 
have  been  differently  put,  particularly  in  its  sug- 
gested application  to  individuals  ;  in  such  matters 
there  need  be  no  question  of  integrity  and  good 
intent. 

Mrs.  Besant  was  and  is  still  a  typical  figure  of 

304 


FAITHS  AND  UNFAITHS  305 

the  time,  in  her  power  to  hold  the  most  contra- 
dictory faiths  for  fair  trial.  I  have  known  her,  or 
known  of  her,  in  almost  every  phase.  She  was  a 
clergyman's  wife,  never  perhaps  a  very  orthodox 
one,  though  she  seems  to  have  done  her  best. 
At  this  stage,  she  used  to  steal  into  her  husband's 
church,  when  she  knew  she  would  have  it  all  to 
herself — that  is  to  say  on  week-days — and  mount 
the  pulpit  to  try  her  powers  in  saying  something 
on  her  own  account  to  the  attentive  echoes.  In 
the  next  stage,  with  a  due  interval,  of  course,  she 
has  become  a  disciple  of  Mr.  Bradlaugh,  our  East 
End  Voltaire  or  Tom  Paine  with  a  difference  to 
intensify  the  spirit  of  denial,  who  denounced  the 
religion  of  the  churches  as  a  mockery.  Her 
heretical  self-assertion  was  a  great  blow  to  her 
brother-in-law,  Walter  Besant,  who  actually  altered 
the  accentuation  of  the  family  name,  by  way  of 
showing  that  she  had  no  longer  part  or  lot  in  its 
fortunes.  Her  children  have  been  devoted  to  her 
from  first  to  last. 

Bradlaugh  was  still  a  priest  in  his  way,  and  in 
his  new  cult  of  Reason  inducted  neophytes  with 
a  ceremonial,  and  buried  them  when  they  happened 
to  want  it.  One  of  the  many  Holyoakes  was  with 
him,  and  kept  shop  as  publisher  of  the  literature 
of  the  movement,  in  a  house  in  the  network  of 
courts  between  Fleet  Street  and  Holborn.  The 
full  ritual  was  used  at  his  funeral.  The  mourners 
were  told  how  consonant  it  was  to  his  feelings 
in  life  to  await  his  sure  and  certain  resurrection 
as  cereals  for  the  nourishment  of  his  fellow-creatures, 
or  as  flowers  for  their  delight. 


306  MY  HARVEST 

Bradlaugh's  eloquence  of  strong  logical  exposition 
was  extraordinary,  and  so  was  his  debating  power 
with  its  flashes  of  humour  and  of  scorn.  There 
are  to  this  day  abiding  traces  of  his  influence  in 
the  perfectly  ordered  sequence  of  Mrs.  Besant's 
themes,  and  the  studied  clearness  of  her  delivery. 
The  silvery  voice  is  all  her  own,  if  indeed  she  is 
not  as  much  indebted  to  nature  as  to  art  for  the 
rest.  She  held  her  rude  audiences  at  the  Hall  of 
Science,  as  she  has  since  held  others  of  every  degree, 
by  the  sheer  magic  of  her  oratorical  powers.  I  have 
a  vivid  recollection  of  her  at  a  somewhat  later 
period,  arrayed  in  all  her  striking  beauty,  in  a 
crimson  gown,  and  delivering,  with  a  sort  of 
measured  fury,  a  commemorative  address  on  the 
Commune  of  Paris.  It  was  a  fine  performance  ; 
she  might  have  stood  for  a  statue  of  the  goddess  of 
war  in  the  personality  of  an  inspired  petroleuse. 
She  was  a  republican,  an  unbeliever,  a  holder  of 
the  most  extraordinary  doctrines  on  the  relations 
of  the  sexes,  a  duplicate  one  might  say,  in  regard 
to  all  authority,  of  old  Blanqui  with  his  "  neither 
God  nor  master." 

A  change  and  an  interval  of  years,  and  I  am 
with  the  Theosophists  in  the  Avenue  Road,  to 
find  her  as  the  mild  and  submissive  catechumen 
of  that  profession  of  faith.  She  has  met  Madame 
Blavatsky,  and  has  found  religion  in  an  importation 
from  the  East.  She  sits,  metaphorically,  at  the 
feet  of  the  old  arch-priestess  with  the  staring  eyes 
like  bits  of  glittering  enamel,  the  mannish  voice, 
the  unwieldy  bulk,  the  habits  of  the  valetudinarian. 
The  cooing  as  of  the  turtle,  that  belongs  more 


FAITHS  AND  UNFAITHS  307 

properly  to  the  environment  of  the  doctrine  of 
universal  love,  is  done  by  the  new  disciple,  the 
former  pythoness  of  the  revolutionary  platform. 
Her  eyes  are  suffused  with  a  soft  glow  of  trust  in 
her  teacher  that  by  no  means  stops  short  of  faith 
in  what  we  should  ignorantly  call  her  miracles. 

The  surroundings  being  propitious,  the  teacher 
may,  if  the  humour  takes  her,  give  the  visitors 
a  touch  of  her  craftmanship  there  and  then.  Some- 
one, let  us  say,  has  expressed  a  wish  for  a  gold 
ring.  Nothing  easier ;  a  wave  of  the  hand  in  the 
air,  and,  perhaps,  a  few  muttered  words  of  in- 
cantation, and  the  ring  is  produced  from  space, 
and  handed  to  the  visitor.  But  the  first  condition 
of  its  production,  as  all  are  carefully  informed, 
is  to  hold  it  no  miracle  at  all.  It  is  simply  a  result 
of  a  deeper  knowledge  of  the  properties  of  matter, 
as  these  have  been  discovered  in  the  course  of 
countless  ages  by  the  Mahatmas,  or  wise  men  of 
the  East,  and  communicated  to  the  lady  in  the 
chair.  I  was  not  fortunate  enough  to  witness  this 
demonstration  ;  I  did  but  hear  of  it  as  an  un- 
questionable fact. 

In  India,  as  we  all  know  by  the  proceedings 
of  the  Psychical  Research  Society,  the  same 
magician  of  science  has  produced  from  the  earth 
under  her  feet,  a  whole  tea  service,  tongs  and  all, 
for  the  refreshment  of  herself  and  the  disciples. 
They  thirsted,  and  there  was  nothing  at  hand. 
They  were  told  to  dig  under  a  neighbouring  tree, 
and,  lo  !  all  things  needful,  as  neatly  packed  as 
any  basket  at  the  railway  stations.  It  is  true  that 
an  angry  servant  of  the  household  afterwards 


308  MY  HARVEST 

confessed  to  placing  it  there  by  authority  the 
night  before,  and  to  connivance  in  the  arrange- 
ments by  which  the  party  was  led  to  the  exact 
spot  to  find  it  on  call. 

These  quarrels  did  not  shake  the  faith  of  be- 
lievers, and  if  you  were  not  a  believer,  you  might 
go  elsewhere.  But  first  join  the  classes  for  in- 
struction, and  give  yourself  a  chance.  The 
Mahatmas  in  their  lonely  retreats  in  the  Himalayas 
think  nothing  of  such  trivial  manifestations  of 
power.  Much  more  could  they  do,  much  more 
could  they  impart,  but  for  the  fear  of  the  misuse 
of  it  by  the  ignorance  or  the  malevolence  of  un- 
regenerate  man.  They  could  turn  out  not  only 
rings  but  earthquakes  with  a  wave  of  the  hand. 
But  never  fear ;  they  will  keep  us  all  safe  until 
they  have  the  full  and  perfect  assurance  that 
their  secrets  will  be  used  to  no  purpose  but  the 
common  good  of  the  race. 

Presently,  if  we  are  highly  favoured,  we  may 
be  asked  to  move  to  the  dining-room  for  a  frugal 
meal  that  involves  no  violence  to  animal  life  in 
any  of  its  forms.  On  the  way  there  you  must  not 
so  much  as  put  a  foot  on  a  blackbeetle  if  it  crosses 
your  path.  We  are  all  little  brothers  and  sisters 
of  St.  Francis  in  that  respect.  The  teachers 
unbend.  One  shows  in  quite  a  matter-of-fact  way 
that  he  is  often  in  conversational  touch  with  the 
Hebrew  patriarchs  or  the  Hindoo  sages.  Nobody 
exhibits  the  slightest  astonishment ;  it  is  simply 
a  piece  of  society  news  from  that  higher  astral 
plane  which  these  personages  have  long  since 
attained.  Mrs.  Besant,  perhaps,  makes  passing 


FAITHS  AND  UNFAITHS  309 

mention  of  a  call  that  very  morning  from  Bradlaugh 
(long  since  dead),  and  of  his  cheery  salutation  : 
"  You  were  right — there  is  a  life  beyond  the 
grave."  They  had  parted  company  on  her  con- 
version, but  they  never  ceased  to  be  good  friends. 
Dinner  over,  we  move  to  the  library  to  circularise 
the  universe  on  the  business  of  propaganda,  through 
the  medium  of  the  halfpenny  post. 

Another  change,  and  we  are  in  the  lecture  room 
to  listen  to  an  amazing  discourse  by  the  same 
lady,  on  the  progress  of  a  primordial  germ  of  soul 
in  the  making,  through  the  starry  spheres.  It  is 
a  tedious  business — I  mean  the  journey — running 
through  thousands  and  even  millions  of  years  in 
time  and  billions  of  miles  in  space.  The  itinerary 
is  as  explicit  and  as  matter  of  fact  as  a  jotting 
for  a  drive  through  the  dukeries  in  a  motor-car. 
The  germ  abides  for  so  many  aeons — say  in  Orion  : 
I  do  not  speak  by  the  card,  but  only  for  the  purpose 
of  illustration  ;  any  name  will  do,  and  any  period, 
if  only  it  is  big  enough.  Other  calls  on  Jupiter, 
Uranus  or  Saturn,  may  run  collectively  into  a 
few  millions  more  of  evolution,  until  the  little 
stranger  of  the  spirit  has  matured  into  a  com- 
parative fullness  of  being  that  may  qualify  it  for 
the  higher  service  of  man  on  our  planet,  with  an 
office  on  an  Indian  peak. 

At  another  time,  still  in  the  Avenue  Road,  the 
same  extraordinary  person  is,  or  rather  was,  to 
be  found  in  summer  seated  on  the  grass  in  the 
garden,  and  imparting  instruction  to  a  knot  of 
disciples  mainly  in  skirts,  like  hers,  of  Indian 
cut.  She  has  arrived  at  full  mastery  now  ;  Madame 


310  MY  HARVEST 

Blavatsky — "  H.P.B."  for  reference — is  dead,  or 
rather  has  passed  over  to  another  stage  of  being, 
while  still,  of  course,  in  active  superintendence  of 
the  work.  The  creamy  white  of  the  draperies  of 
the  new  instructress-in-chief  is  in  harmony  with 
her  still  beautiful  hair  ;  and  every  sparing  touch 
of  ornament  bears  its  symbolic  suggestion  of  the 
mysteries.  The  scene  is  perfect  as  a  picture  ;  it 
is  almost  Buddha  under  the  Bo-tree,  in  full 
assurance  of  the  perfect  wisdom  and  the  perfect 
peace,  and  ready  to  impart  its  secret  to  suffering 
humanity. 

Once  more,  and  she  stands  on  the  platform  of 
some  hall  at  the  West  End,  packed  with  one  of 
the  most  eminently  respectable  audiences  in 
London.  I  miss  the  working-man  in  her  following, 
I  mean  as  a  feature.  The  message  he  wants  to 
hear  is  delivered  usually  at  the  other  end  of  town. 
Her  address  is  impeccable  in  its  measured  and 
restrained  eloquence,  its  clarity,  and  all  the  graces 
of  rhetoric,  and  it  takes  its  stately  march  from 
beginning  to  end  without  a  pause  for  a  thought 
or  a  word.  This  is  the  more  remarkable,  because 
it  is  as  abstruse  as  anything  in  the  higher  mathe- 
matics. 

Another  vision  and  she  is  at  the  Fabian  Society, 
revisiting  the  glimpses  of  the  moon  of  Socialism, 
almost  as  an  act  of  grace.  She  has  stood  on  that 
platform  or  others  of  the  kind  many  a  time  before, 
in  one  instance,  as  we  have  seen,  to  glorify  red 
ruin  and  the  breaking  up  of  laws,  to  rouse  masses 
against  classes,  to  inspire  the  terror  of  the  Terror 
that  is  to  come,  if  the  people  in  possession  do  not 


FAITHS  AND  UNFAITHS  311 

mend  their  ways.  To-night  it  is  quite  a  different 
tale.  She  is  here  to  bless  what  she  was  ready  to 
curse — wise  theocracies  uniting  king  and  priest 
as  governors,  a  docile  people  immutably  fixed  in 
their  stations  and  pursuits,  and  as  a  result  the 
only  taste  of  the  golden  age  ever  vouchsafed  to 
man.  The  Society  listens  in  respectful  silence, 
not  of  assent,  but  of  courtesy.  She  is  a  guest ; 
she  was  once  a  comrade  ;  she  was  always  straight 
according  to  her  convictions — let  her  have  her 
say  without  a  jarring  word.  The  debate  that 
follows  runs  its  course  on  these  lines  ;  and  it  is 
quite  amusing  to  see  how  champion  after  champion 
of  the  wholly  opposite  way  of  thinking  contrives 
to  preserve  his  loyalty  to  his  own  political  faith, 
without  casting  the  slightest  reflection  upon  hers. 
The  buttons  are  on  the  foils  all  the  time,  or,  to 
change  the  figure,  it  is  a  perfect  egg  dance  in  the 
order  of  ideas.  Not  a  shell  is  broken,  even  when 
we  hear  that  the  virtuous  king  was  universal 
banker  and  universal  trustee,  keeping  so  much  of 
the  revenue  for  the  maintenance  of  the  priests 
and  the  temples,  so  much  for  the  civil  adminis- 
tration, and  laying  out  the  rest  for  the  benefit  of 
his  people,  who  had  earned  the  whole,  without 
troubling  them  to  put  their  hands  in  their  pockets 
for  the  satisfaction  of  a  single  want.  Ask  where  it 
happened,  it  was  naturally  somewhere  in  India ; 
ask  when — almost  before  the  beginning  of  days,  as 
known  to  our  calendars  of  mushroom  growth. 

A  last  vision — I  trust  only  to  this  date — is  of  an 
aged  lady  still  arrayed  in  the  white  of  her  sacer- 
dotal function,  and  waiting  patiently  to  cross 


312  MY  HARVEST 

Piccadilly  at  flood  time  with  the  help  of  a  police- 
man, and  of  a  young  lady  in  charge.  Hats  are 
raised  here  and  there,  but  I  am  not  quite  sure 
that  she  is  aware  of  them,  in  spite  of  the  unfading 
brilliancy  of  the  eyes.  The  step  is  cautious  ;  the 
form  stoops.  Then  I  learn  from  the  papers  that 
she  has  come  on  one  of  her  brief  visits  from  India, 
to  give  another  course  of  lectures  for  the  benefit 
of  the  Western  world. 

The  central  theme  of  the  lectures  is  a  perfect 
unity — the  immanence  of  God.  Man  is  a  spiritual 
intelligence  sharing  in  God's  eternity,  and  unfolding 
the  divine  powers  of  his  Father,  by  means  of  re- 
incarnation, through  countless  ages  of  progress. 
As  all  men  partake  in  the  Divine  Nature  all  are 
unfolding  towards  happiness.  Where,  then,  is  there 
room  for  sorrow,  since  God  is  everywhere,  and  He 
is  bliss  ? 

This  doctrine  has  reached  the  pulpits — that  of 
The  City  Temple  particularly — it  has  even  reached 
Dean's  Yard,  a  greater  conquest  still,  for  Arch- 
deacon Wilberforce  holds  a  congregation  spell- 
bound with  the  idea.  He  has  not  conquered 
The  Yard,  for  The  Yard  is  virtually  Westminster 
Abbey  ;  but  the  more  significant  fact  is  that  The 
Yard  has  not  conquered  him.  The  frown  of  out- 
raged British  orthodoxy  cannot  prevail  against 
him,  though  but  for  that,  no  doubt,  he  would 
long  since  have  been  a  Bishop.  He  does  not 
mind. 

Another  of  his  fancies,  as  they  are  estimated  in 
that  quarter,  is  the  compelling  power  of  simul- 
taneous silent  prayer  in  a  concentration  of  the 


FAITHS  AND  UNFAITHS  313 

whole  nature  on  a  desire  for  one  particular  good. 
Every  Sunday,  the  lean  mystic,  who  ought  to 
have  been  born  on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges,  reads 
a  list  of  requests  for  aid  of  this  kind,  from  sufferers 
of  every  description.  Thus  specialised,  the  practice 
has  become  quite  a  different  thing  in  its  cogency 
of  appeal  from  the  ordinary  prayers  of  the  Church 
Service  for  those  troubled  in  mind  or  estate.  The 
congregation  sits  or  kneels,  as  though  in  trance, 
generally  with  eyes  closed.  It  is  a  bold  under- 
taking, since  its  efficacy  is  subject  to  the  almost 
immediate  test  of  the  event.  It  has  had  remark- 
able success.  Some  years  ago  a  lady  student 
at  one  of  the  hospitals  suddenly  disappeared 
under  extraordinary  circumstances,  and  the  whole 
country,  to  say  nothing  of  her  agonised  family, 
was  longing  to  know  her  fate.  Her  correspondence 
had  been  ransacked ;  the  police  had  done  their 
best ;  but  all  in  vain.  The  Archdeacon  mentioned 
the  case  from  the  pulpit,  and  urged  the  congregation 
to  fix  its  mind  on  a  petition  for  the  discovery  of  a 
clue.  A  few  hours  later  some  urchins,  trespassing 
in  a  copse  in  Richmond  Park,  came  upon  the  body 
with  a  phial  of  poison  by  its  side. 

Dean's  Yard  did  not  half  like  the  look  of  it,  but 
it  had  to  hold  its  peace.  It  is  not  without  its  own 
eccentricities  of  belief,  which  its  extra-territorial 
position  in  regard  to  episcopal  jurisdiction  enables 
it  to  hold  without  fear  of  the  pastoral  staff.  In 
select  cases  it  has  a  kindly  though  a  strictly  un- 
official eye  on  the  Second  Adventists.  The  in- 
crease of  this  sect  is  one  of  the  most  extraordinary 
signs  of  the  time.  It  is  one  of  the  few  that  spread 


314  MY  HARVEST 

among  the  people ;  the  others  mostly  begin 
with  the  dilettanti  of  religious  thought,  and  end 
with  them.  In  such  exalted  spheres  the  attraction 
is  not  so  much  belief  for  its  practical  uses  in  the 
battle  of  life  ;  it  is  rather  belief  about  beliefs, 
as  one  of  the  luxuries  of  religious  and  often  mystical 
speculation.  The  people,  on  the  contrary,  demand 
a  faith  they  can  hold  with  the  tremendous  clutch 
of  their  manifold  and  ever-pressing  needs.  They 
want  the  medicine  that  will  do  them  good  in  the 
crises  of  their  poverty  and  their  helplessness. 
I  have  seen  a  whole  congregation  prostrate,  or  on 
all  fours,  waiting  with  groans  and  cries  for  a  Second 
Coming  that  may  take  place  at  any  moment  of 
the  day  or  night.  "  Here  !  Now  !  To-morrow 
perhaps  !  '"  at  the  latest,  and  the  Redeemer  in 
the  skies,  with  hosts  of  attendant  angels,  to  chain 
the  devil,  for  a  thousand  years,  with  a  prospect 
of  one  more  great  upheaval  at  the  end  of  it  that 
shall  bind  him  for  ever.  And  with  the  Coming, 
an  immediate  transfer  of  all  the  rule  of  princi- 
palities and  powers  into  the  hands  of  the  new 
aristocracy  of  sainthood  that  now  lies  prone  in 
a  tabernacle  over  a  chandler's  shop,  or  to  its 
kindred  congregations  in  the  like  humble  setting 
all  over  the  English-speaking  world — particularly 
in  America. 

Their  ministrant  on  this  occasion  is  no  mitred 
member  of  the  hierarchies  as  they  stand  in  the 
accepted  faiths  of  Christendom,  but  haply  an 
ex-army  pensioner  or  policeman,  who  drops  his 
h's  in  his  utter  unconcern  about  any  form  of  speech 
but  the  Unknown  Tongue.  This  is  still  a  tongue 


FAITHS  AND  UNFAITHS  315 

unknown  even  to  himself,  for  you  are  to  understand 
that  he  is  merely  a  channel  of  communication. 
He  says  what  it  is  put  into  him  to  say  ;  and  he 
needs  an  interpreter  as  much  for  himself  as  for 
the  congregation.  The  real  speaker  is  Very  God, 
delivering  an  oracle. 

Help  is  at  hand.  When  the  minister  takes  his 
seat  again,  with  every  sign  of  extreme  fatigue  in 
body  and  in  mind,  a  sister  rises  with  the  same 
divinely  given  power  of  interpretation,  specialized 
in  herself,  as  the  power  of  deliverance  was  specialized 
in  the  other ;  and  turns  the  message,  still  without 
the  aspirates  if  you  like,  into  the  current  speech 
of  the  class  to  which  most  of  them  belong.  She 
could  not  parse  her  version,  to  save  her  life,  still 
less  could  she  repeat  it  in  the  original ;  her  sole 
duty  and  power  is  to  get  it  Englished  as  the  words 
are  put  into  her  mind  by  the  higher  power.  Its 
burden  is  Here  I  and  Now  !  the  skies  may  open 
to  the  dazzling  visitation  of  glory  as  you  walk 
home  through  the  miry  ways  to-night.  And  then? 
In  a  moment,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  every  one 
of  you,  the  half-epileptic  washerwoman,  the  toil- 
worn  street-sweeper  and  what  not,  will  be  suddenly 
called  upon  to  take  a  leading  place  in  the  govern- 
ance of  the  world,  and  to  undergo  a  full  and 
complete  transformation  of  flesh  and  spirit  for  the 
change. 

Their  term  of  service  is  the  thousand  years  for 
the  start.  To  equip  them  for  the  higher  calling 
their  bodies  will  be  charged  with  absolute  in- 
corruptibility, their  minds  with  all  the  mighty 
secrets  and  the  mighty  powers  needed  for  the 


316  MY  HARVEST 

guidance  of  the  herd  of  unregenerate  humanity 
committed  to  their  care. 

I  walked  home  with  the  one  who  had  taken  me 
to  the  service,  landlady  of  a  humble  lodging-house, 
and  old  acquaintance.  She  had  the  full  certainty  of 
her  mission  and  of  her  destiny. 

"  '  Behold,  I  come  quickly,'  it  is  written  ;  what 
more  do  you  want  ?  " 

"  Yes  ;  but  it  has  been  written  over  nineteen 
hundred  years  and  yet " 

"  Ah,  they  didn't  know  how  to  read  the  pro- 
phecies ;  we  do,"  and  she  drenched  me  with  a 
shower  of  texts.  "  The  world  is  too  wicked  ;  the 
saints  must  rule." 

"  Yourself  perhaps  to  be  a  ruler  under  the 
King  ?  " 

"  Under  the  King  of  Glory,  please." 

"  Would  your  knowledge,  your  habits  of  life, 
your  experience ?  ': 

She  turned  impatiently  from  me  :  "  All  that  will 
be  given  to  His  saints." 

"  And  those  who  have  gone  to  their  graves 
through  the  long  night  of  waiting  ?  ': 

"  They  will  rise  to  bear  their  part — if  they  are 
saints,  mind  you  !  It  is  written  :  you  must  not 
argue  about  it :  we  are  instruments  :  all  will  be 
given  to  us  in  full  measure.  Believe." 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THRESHING  OUT 

THE  time  has  come  to  thresh  out  a  few  sheaves. 
Our  age  differs  from  its  forerunners,  mainly 
in  the  individual's  cultivated  sense  of  himself. 
All  the  religions,  of  course,  have  tried  to  give  him 
that ;  but  where,  before,  it  was  the  sense  of  what 
he  owed,  it  is  now  only  the  sense  of  what  is  due 
to  him.  The  principle  is  the  creditor  as  the  crown 
of  things,  in  his  craze  for  '  personality,'  a  hybrid 
of  etymology,  enjoying  the  freedom  of  every  city. 
Hitherto  there  has  been  some  idea  of  the  obligation 
to  put  the  whole  before  the  part.  It  is  mind  your 
own  business  to-day  ;  and,  if  you  want  farther 
guidance,  consult  the  looking-glass. 

The  change  has  brought  a  thousand  others  in 
its  train.  How  simple  the  issues  in  politics  when 
the  two  old-fashioned  parties  had  their  square 
stand-up  fight,  and  there  was  no  room  within 
them,  or  no  inclination  for  finer  shades  of  sub- 
division. With  us  it  was  represented  by  the 
occasional  set-to  between  Lord  Palmerston  and 
the  Tiverton  butcher.  '  Pam '  went  down  for 
his  annual  address  to  constituents ;  and  the 
butcher,  who,  as  a  free  and  independent  elector, 
did  not  happen  to  think  much  of  him,  told  him 
so  to  his  face.  The  winner  of  a  hundred  fights 

317 


818  MY  HARVEST 

in  Parliament  replied ;  The  Times  came  out 
with  a  verbatim  report ;  the  country  had  its 
laugh,  and  there  was  an  end  of  it,  till  next 
year. 

Think  of  but  one  day  of  Mr.  Asquith's,  com- 
pared with  the  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  of 
the  other — parties  by  the  dozen,  movements, 
deputations,  secret  exits  and  entrances  to  his 
own  house,  with  bodyguards  against  occasional 
throwers  of  the  hatchet.  Every  one  of  these  persons 
is  astir  for  others  only  by  accident  or  necessity  ; 
his  banner  bears  the  device  of  his  own  hand. 

The  major  prophets  of  the  movement  are  of 
great  standing  and  power,  with  Ibsen  leading  the 
way  in  influence,  if  not  absolutely  in  the  order  of 
time.  All  or  nothing,  and  all  for  just  what  I  see 
and  no  more.  How  different  from  old  Carlyle, 
who  exercised  the  Censorial  office  in  our  Victorian 
time.  He  would  be  but  superficially  described  as 
a  Primitive  Indigestion  brooding  over  the  Seven 
Days  of  Creation,  and  finding  it  all  a  mistake. 
He  saved  himself  in  time  by  the  ethic  of  the  Ever- 
lasting Yea.  To  be  fair,  however,  in  the  decline 
of  his  power,  he  came  perilously  near  Superman. 
Some  of  his  heroes  were  hardly  distinguishable 
from  the  asses  of  self-will,  and  of  that  terrible 
variety  the  Zebra  or  Wild  Ass  of  the  plains,  whose 
kick  of  sheer  high  spirits  is  death.  The  favourite 
diversion  of  this  animal,  I  can  but  suspect,  is 
to  masquerade  in  the  skin  of  the  Laughing 
Lion. 

Blessedness,  the  sweet  of  adversity  for  the 
building  up  of  character,  self-control,  self-denial, 


THRESHING  OUT  819 

the  old  beatitudes,  no  matter  what  their  theological 
setting,  the  old  new  birth  of  the  spirit  into  its 
real  self-hood,  in  one  word,  all  that  differentiates 
the  finished  article  from  the  mere  mistakes  of  the 
potter,  these,  I  think,  in  their  struggle  for  the 
recovery  of  the  old  ethical  pattern,  are  going 
to  be  the  note  of  a  new  time.  Leave  the  others 
to  live  from  a  single  function,  mainly  physical : 
man  is  a  harmony. 

Ibsen's  Brand  is  one  of  these  melancholy  failures 
in  the  attempt  to  make  a  single  organ  do  the  work 
of  all.     He   knows   no   hindrance,    no   misgiving. 
It  is  not  pessimism  because  pessimism  is  a  positive 
quality,  it  is  a  sheer  4 1  will ' — the  thing  I  see,  the 
thing  I  want  idealized  as  rounded  perfect  and  all- 
sufficing,  and  pursued  at  all  costs  with  no  corrective 
but  the  raw  result  in  failure.     What  would  the 
gentle   Matthew   Arnold   have   thought   of  that  ? 
Peer   Gynt   again,    another   self-absorbed   monster 
of  the  same  cast.     Nietzsche — now  being  white- 
washed into  a  missionary,  by  shamed  interpreters 
who    themselves    need    a    touch    of   the    brush — 
much  the  same.     And  with  them,  as  it  seems,  on 
the  surface,  an  attack  in  form  on  all  the  old  pieties, 
symbolized  as  morality  in  the  governance  of  life. 
Every  man  to  do  as  he  pleases,  and  let  the  best 
man  win.    And  what  driving  force  brought  to  the 
work,  the  hate  of  hate,  the  scorn  of  scorn  for  the 
giftless,   and,   as  a  backing,   German  science  and 
German  learning.     For  absolutes,  you  cannot  go 
beyond  that.     Dionysus  is  out  for  the  fun  of  the 
fair,  and  woe  to  Apollo  who  stands  in  his  way 
with  the  antiquated  rules.     Mr.  Oscar  Levy  has 


320  MY  HARVEST 

made  a  gallant  attempt  to  save  his  client  by 
showing  that  all  his  doctrine,  rightly  interpreted, 
is  but  a  protest  against  individualism  in  the  wrong 
persons — that  is  against  ninety-nine  hundredths 
of  the  human  race.  Their  business  is  not  to  be 
levelled  up  to  knowledge,  but  levelled  down  to 
obedience  and  acquiescence. 

There  is  much  scholarship  in  it  all,  and  as  little 
wisdom ;  and  in  the  occasional  difference  between 
these  is  the  underlying  fallacy  of  the  whole  move- 
ment. Our  local  variety  of  that  fallacy  is  the 
sordid  Shakespeare-Bacon  controversy,  which  once 
bid  fair  to  make  us  the  laughing-stock  of  the 
world.  Bacon  was  the  most  learned  person  of 
his  time  ;  Shakespeare,  as  its  reputed  best  writer, 
was  one  of  the  least  learned ;  therefore  Bacon 
must  have  written  the  plays.  Shakespeare  was  a 
very  low  fellow  :  all  minds  of  this  calibre  seem 
instinctively  to  rage  against  him.  "  Dost  thou 
sleep  only  ?  ':  says  the  chamberlain  of  the  Vatican, 
as  with  ivory  gavel  he  taps  the  brow  of  the  dead 
Pope.  The  Pope  goes  on  keeping  as  quiet  as 
Shakespeare  by  Avonside. 

Mr.  Shaw  is  the  new  self-realization  preached 
through  a  megaphone,  and  still  but  Master  Slender 
or  Aguecheek  with  the  strong  word  if  he  dies  for 
it.  To  wit : 

"  With  the  single  exception  of  Homer,  there  is 
no  eminent  writer,  not  even  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
whom  I  can  despise  so  utterly  as  I  despise  Shake- 
speare when  I  measure  my  mind  against  his.  The 
intensity  of  my  impatience  with  him  occasionally 
reaches  such  a  pitch,  that  it  would  positively  be  a 


THRESHING  OUT  321 

relief  to  me  to  dig  him  up  and  throw  stones  at  him, 
knowing  as  I  do  how  incapable  he  and  his  wor- 
shippers are  of  understanding  any  less  obvious 
form  of  indignity.  To  read  Cymbeline  and  to 
think  of  Goethe,  of  Wagner,  of  Ibsen,  is,  for  me, 
to  imperil  the  habit  of  studied  moderation  of 
statement  which  years  of  public  responsibility 
as  a  journalist  have  made  almost  second  nature 
in  me."  La  you  now  ! 

A  pretty  journalist  with  this  vile  rhodomontade 
for  his  standard  of  the  decencies  of  the  craft. 

The  lack  of  critical  faculty,  to  say  nothing  of 
education,  in  it  all  is  really  without  excuse.  Shake- 
speare will  never  be  understood  till  we  study  him, 
not  merely  as  the  actor-manager,  but  as  the  author- 
manager.  He  had  to  fill  his  theatre,  and  he  could 
not  turn  out  a  new  Hamlet  or  a  new  Othello  every 
time  he  wanted  a  change  of  bill.  He  probably 
took  Cymbeline  out  of  the  famous  wooden  box  as  it 
had  come  to  him  with  the  other  properties,  touched 
it  up  in  a  night  and  a  day,  played  it  as  long  as  he 
could,  threw  it  back  into  the  box  again,  and  when, 
finally,  he  shook  the  dust  of  London  from  his  feet, 
left  the  whole  precious  load  there  for  Hemyng  and 
Condell  to  rescue  for  posterity  years  after,  less  by 
man's  contrivance  than  by  the  grace  of  God. 

This  accident,  and  his  supreme  indifference  to  the 
plays,  as  distinct  perhaps  from  the  Sonnets,  made 
the  Shakespeare  canon.  His  emendatory  touches 
are  easily  traced  by  anyone  with  the  slightest  sense 
of  literature.  Look  out  for  the  bits  of  fine  gold. 
There  are  such  in  Cymbeline.  Who — of  course 
with  the  single  exception  of  Mr.  Shaw — could 


322  MY  HARVEST 

have  written  "  Hark  !  hark,  the  lark  "  or  "  Fear 
no  more  the  heat  o'  the  sun  "  ?  The  line  of  cleavage 
is  quite  clear  as  between  what  might  have  been 
written  by  anybody,  and  what  could  have  been 
written  by  but  one  alone.  You  may  give  the  rest  to 
Anon.,  and  welcome,  or  to  Bacon,  if  you  like.  It 
was  careless  of  their  author  to  have  failed  to  enter 
them  at  Stationers'  Hall,  but  the  giants  of  old 
were  like  that.  It  is  a  case  of  put  yourself  in  his 
place — if  Mr.  Shaw  is  able  to  do  that  in  regard 
to  any  living  organism  in  creation.  '  My  habit  of 
studied  moderation  ' — Hark  !  hark  !  "  the  cox- 
comb bird." 

It  is  needless  to  labour  the  point  of  Scott.  Every 
work  of  every  kind  is  to  be  judged  by  its  historic 
standpoint — what  it  did  in  and  for  its  time.  Never 
mind  his  superficial  faults,  most  of  them  due  to 
haste,  think  of  his  colossal  achievement,  and  of  the 
glowing  tribute  of  gratitude  from  contemporaries 
for  a  whole  literature,  revolutionized  in  the  outlook 
throughout  the  world. 

Homer — but  really  why  go  on  ? 

I  came  late  to  a  Fabian  lecture  one  day,  but 
unhappily  still  in  time  to  hear  Mr.  Shaw  sum  up 
the  life-work  of  Darwin  as  that  of  a  '  pigeon 
fancier.' 

A  few  made  wry  faces,  but  the  Fabian  giggle 
ran  round  the  room. 

"  He  is  always  so  cheerful,"  said  one. 

"  So  merry,"  corrected  another. 

"  You  can't  help  laughing,"  added  a  third, 
"  even  when  you  don't  know  what  he's  talking 
about." 


THRESHING  OUT  323 

All  this  may  be  good  business  from  the  height 
of  the  trestles  at  a  fair,  but,  in  my  humble  judg- 
ment, it  makes  a  poor  contribution  to  thought. 
The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  crude  blasphemies 
of  Blanco  Posnet  as  a  sort  of  first  essay,  and  of 
the  '  swear-word  '  of  another  play  only  for  the 
culmination.  The  portentous  prefaces  to  these 
productions  are  of  the  same  order  of  technic. 
But  why  not  print  them  at  the  top  of  the  page, 
and  treat  the  play  as  the  notes  ?  The  wretched 
girding  at  morals  throughout  is  all  of  a  piece  : 
at  best,  it  is  only  one  moral  more,  and  a  bad 
one. 

"  You  make  a  great  fuss  about  him,"  once 
said  a  brilliant  Irishwoman  to  me  :  "we  have  a 
man  like  that  at  the  cross-roads  of  every  village 
snacking  every  passer-by  for  the  benefit  of  the 
crowd." 

"  So,  for  that  matter,"  I  said,  "  had  the  Achaians 
of  the  despised  Iliad." 

"  Yes,  but  Agamemnon  was  at  hand  with  his 
truncheon,  so  it  came  out  all  right." 

It  seemed  to  account  for  much,  especially  for  that 
wellnigh  invariable  depreciation  of  the  English, 
to  whom  he  owes  all  but  the  very  breath  of  his 
nostrils. 

The  lines  still  rang  in  my  ears  : — 

The  coxcomb  bird  so  talkative  and  grave 

That  from  his  cage  cries  cuckold    .    .    .   and  knave ; 

Though  many  a  passenger  he  rightly  call, 

You  hold  him  no  philosopher  at  all. 

In  this  case  it  is  no  doubt  complicated  by  certain 
misadventures  of  inherited  character.  The  Shaws, 


824  MY  HARVEST 

it  seems,  were  always  proud  of  their  standing  as 
"  dacent  people."  The  last  of  their  line  to  date 
tries  hard  to  disclaim  all  share  in  these  pre- 
tensions, but  nature  is  too  much  for  him.  Hence 
the  portraits,  with  their  artful  arrangements  of  the 
lights  to  show  the  man  of  mystery,  or  the  readings 
of  the  hand,  offered  freely  to  the  Press  or  to  the 
biographers.  And,  above  all,  hence  the  fatuous 
family  tree,  drawn  up  for  the  benefit  of  an  admirer, 
and  as  I  seem  to  remember,  a  dreary  plateau  of 
squireens  with  a  knight  as  makeshift  for  an  alp. 
But  of  course  this  is  given  only  as  contribution 
to  a  science  of  eugenics,  that  is  beginning  to  cover 
a  multitude  of  sins  against  common  sense  and 
even  common  decency.  In  one  of  his  speeches  Mr. 
Shaw  described  himself  as  roaming  London,  almost 
in  vain,  to  find  a  woman  to  whom  he  might  con- 
descend to  throw  the  eugenical  handkerchief — in 
the  sole  interest,  of  course,  of  the  improvement  of 
the  race. 

The  portentous  development  of  the  organ  of 
Self-Esteem  may  explain  all.  It  would  be  a  kind- 
ness on  his  part  to  leave  it  to  the  College  of  Surgeons, 
with  due  notice  of  the  bequest,  in  advance,  to 
give  them  time  to  see  about  the  making  of  the 
bottle. 

Yet  withal  it  seems  but  a  poor  conception 
of  a  career.  Test  his  whole  output  by  the  method 
of  the  Virgilian  lots,  and  the  result  is  almost 
invariably  some  brutal  insult  to  an  honoured  name. 
For  the  love  of — well,  say  The  Life  Force,  let  us 
get  this  spirit  out  of  our  hearts  and  out  of  our 
lives. 


THRESHING  OUT  325 

The  deliberate  cultivation  of  individuality  takes 
equally  curious  and  arbitrary  forms  in  other 
quarters.  This  most  commonly  happens  when 
it  is  akin  to  the  process  of  watering  a  stick.  The 
Italian  Futurists  and  Cubists  have  been  especially 
fortunate  in  the  issue  of  their  attempt  to  put  the 
cart  before  the  horse. 

They  were  a  number  of  young  men  who  started 
with  the  assumption  that  they  had  a  right  to  be 
somebody  in  particular,  as  in  other  circumstances 
they  might  have  said  they  had  a  right  to  bread  and 
life.  They  were  quite  frank  about  it  :  as  artists 
they  saw  there  was  scant  chance  of  distinction 
for  them  in  a  rivalry  with  the  old  masters  who 
held  the  field.  But  one  thing  remained — to  invent 
a  new  art,  and  at  the  same  time  to  proclaim  loudly 
the  patriotic  duty  of  scrapping  all  the  old.  Youth 
will  be  served  :  Italy's  art  treasures  were  really 
Italy's  ruin  :  away  with  them  to  the  funeral  pyre. 
Here  at  once  was  individuality  by  the  short  cut, 
and  with  both  a  consciousness  and  a  method. 

The  next  step  was  the  propaganda  by  the  puff. 
They  accordingly  began  to  make  themselves  a 
nuisance  by  provoking  little  conflicts  with  the 
police,  as  obstructionists  of  the  public  highway. 
When  they  were  taken  before  the  magistrate, 
they  made  violent  speeches  from  the  dock,  to  the 
reporters  ;  and,  if  things  still  looked  unpromising 
for  an  effective  curtain,  they  got  themselves  fined 
for  an  insult  to  the  Bench.  With  that  they  went 
out  to  lunch,  by  preference  at  a  window  open  to 
the  view  from  the  street,  and  wound  up  the  banquet 
by  toasting  each  other's  individuality  for  the 


326  MY  HARVEST 

benefit  of  the  crowd.  The  incident  was  then 
circularized,  in  their  name,  to  the  foreign  Press, 
principally  our  own,  with  a  request  for  a  notice. 
They  took  extraordinary  pains  with  this  part  of 
the  work,  for  in  many  instances  they  had  quite 
pat  the  names  and  addresses  of  prominent  persons 
on  the  staff.  The  notices  began  to  see  the  light, 
at  first  in  derision,  afterwards  on  a  footing  that 
gave  them  the  status  of  an  item  of  the  foreign 
news.  The  agent  in  advance  had  now  done  his 
work  ;  and  when  his  employers  came  to  London, 
they  found  London  ready  for  them. 

The  mechanical  principle  of  this  new  movement 
was  somewhat  like  that  of  the  motor,  progress 
by  shock.  The  old  painting  dealt  with  harmonies 
in  form  and  colour,  composition,  the  exquisite 
niceties  of  effect  in  the  values  and  variations  of 
light.  The  new  had  to  discard  all  these  for  a 
method  of  expression  by  the  variation  of  geometrical 
forms.  A  mass  of  cubes,  squares  or  circles  came  to 
signify  a  storm,  a  street  scene,  a  public  meeting, 
or  a  parting  of  lovers.  On  a  first  view  you  seemed 
to  see  nothing  but  a  Walpurgis  night  dance  of  the 
illustrations  to  Euclid,  but  a  second,  under  in- 
struction, was  understood  to  reveal  the  basic 
principle  of  the  subject  in  its  arrangement  of  these 
angular  shapes.  In  other  words,  the  essential 
idea  was  that  you  had  only  to  transfer  the  pro- 
perties of  one  set  of  physical  phenomena  to 
another  to  produce  a  new  art.  Thus  certain 
French  authors,  of  a  somewhat  earlier  date,  dis- 
covered that  words  had  odours  as  well  as  sounds, 
and  accordingly  began  to  write  by  an  organ,  till 


THRESHING  OUT  327 

then  chiefly  associated  with  the  sense  of  smell. 
In  each  case,  the  new  art  with  the  new  individuality 
behind  it  was  launched  on  its  triumphant  career. 
In  London,  at  least,  the  Futurists  became  quite 
the  fashion,  and  they  probably  went  home  to 
report  "  sold  out  "  as  the  issue  of  the  venture. 

As  a  rule,  the  more  you  leave  your  originality 
to  take  care  of  itself  the  better  for  everybody  con- 
cerned. Yet  it  admits  of  one  mode  of  cultivation 
which  is  entirely  of  the  right  sort.  Flaubert 
touched  on  that,  in  one  of  his  counsels  to  Mau- 
passant. The  latter,  then  I  believe  in  his  nonage, 
complained  that  his  work  seemed  hardly  his  own, 
and  went  to  his  mentor  to  ask  him  how  he  was  to 
become  himself.  "  Wait  "  was  the  answer  in 
effect  :  "  yourself  is  the  last  achievement,  not  the 
first."  He  meant  that  you  had  to  begin  by  clearing 
away  the  accretions  of  the  habit  of  imitation. 
But  how  he  would  have  raged  in  his  glorious  way, 
if  he  had  been  taken  to  mean  a  mere  trick  of 
eccentricity. 

All  the  arts  at  present  have  a  tendency  to  mistake 
this  pinchbeck  substance  for  the  true  metal.  You 
have  it  in  music,  rapidly  degenerating  into  a 
series  of  imitative  effects  in  the  pattering  of  rain 
in  a  shower,  the  booming  of  the  guns  in  a  battle, 
with  the  artist  at  the  big  drum,  now  something 
of  a  gymnast  in  his  gyrations,  lording  it  over  the 
rest  of  the  orchestra.  The  true  function  of  this 
divinest  of  all  the  arts  is  to  express  the  in- 
expressible :  it  should  know  nothing  of  definition. 

We  have  seen  it  in  politics,  with  syndicalism  as 
the  new  bid  for  originality  in  the  popular  party, 


328  MY  HARVEST 

though  it  is  no  more  than  a  sheer  reaction  towards 
the  profit-mongering  of  the  old  guilds.  The 
Snowdens,  the  Macdonalds,  and,  if  he  has  left  a 
successor,  the  Hardies,  notwithstanding  his  occa- 
sional trend  to  eccentricity  of  orbit,  will  soon  set 
that  right.  Such  men  are  in  training  for  full  states- 
manship. Their  brief  holidays  are  spent  in  tour- 
ing the  world,  and  especially  the  empire,  for  the 
study  of  problems  at  first  hand. 

Their  great  opportunity  will  come  at  the  close  of 
our  world  war.  They  have  to  show  that  voluntary 
enlistment  will  beat  conscription  at  its  own  game, 
without  the  loss  of  a  single  liberty  of  a  free 
people.  That  will  be,  not  one,  but  all  the  nails 
for  the  coffin  of  militarism.  Why  not  organize 
the  school  courses  of  one  sex  for  the  teaching  of 
drill,  in  the  absolute  perfection  of  efficiency  for 
the  parade  ground  and  the  line  of  battle  ;  of  the 
other,  for  nursing  in  the  field  ?  This,  and  a  real 
volunteer  movement  to  follow,  in  place  of  the  old 
one  starved  and  snubbed  out  of  existence  by 
the  military  caste,  would  do  the  rest.  There  need 
be  no  element  of  compulsion  in  it  from  first  to 
last.  The  drill  and  the  nursing  would  still  be  a 
matter  of  free  choice  in  recreation  on  the  part  of 
all  concerned,  parents  and  children  alike.  Ninety 
per  cent  would  probably  come  in  at  a  bound  at 
the  start,  and  the  remnant  would  not  long  stand 
out.  Football  and  other  diversions  of  Kipling's 
"oaf  would  still  take  their  proper  place,  and 
still  a  good  one.  He  has  made  ample  amends 
for  the  earlier  errors  of  his  ways  in  his  recent 
glowing  tribute  to  voluntaryism  in  national  defence 


THRESHING  OUT  329 

as  "  the  new  thing  in  a  new  world."  Let  us  have 
it  everywhere  and  not  in  religion  alone  ;  it  is  our 
British  note. 

Keep  the  faddists  out  of  all  these  vital  energies 
of  our  national  life.  The  old  ways  are  still  very 
good  ways,  with  due  adaptation  to  the  needs  of 
the  time  ;  and  in  saying  this  I  bate  no  jot  of  my 
wildest  hopes  for  the  democratic  cause. 

A  French  youth,  of  more  parts  than  judgment, 
was  once  ill-advised  enough  to  worry  Anatole 
France  for  a  prophecy — on  "  the  literature  of 
to-morrow."  Would  it  be  Idealism — Patriotism, 
aesthetic  and  philosophic  —  Subjectivism,  with  all 
its  doctrines  of  the  exception — Triumph  of  de- 
mocracy ?  What  had  the  future  in  store  for  lads 
of  gold  all  agog  for  the  new  thing  ? 

The  veteran's  answer  was  a  cold  douche : 
"  Never  mind  about  to-morrow ;  that  will  take 
care  of  itself ;  the  only  future  within  our  reach 
is  the  present  and  the  past.  The  finest  epochs  of 
all  art  have  been  those  of  harmony  and  tradition, 
when  the  individual  did  not  have  it  all  his  own 
way.  As  for  your  precious  list,  I  cannot  in  the 
least  understand  what  it  all  means.  Where  I  am 
able  to  apprehend  anything  of  the  new  literature, 
I  may  say  that  much  of  it  is  narrow,  brutal,  gross, 
without  taste,  without  the  measure  which  is  the 
all  in  all.  It  fears  neither  to  shock  nor  to 
displease.  It  thinks  it  has  done  everything  when 
it  has  offended  decency,  and  outraged  all  the 
proprieties." 

What  would  he  have  thought  of  Shaw  on  Shake- 
speare ?  I  saw  them  once  together  on  the  same 

Y   2 


330  MY  HARVEST 

platform.  The  irony  of  the  situation,  if  one  could 
have  had  the  faintest  idea  of  the  other's  concept 
of  letters  and  of  life  ! 

This  good  breeding  of  the  pen  is  a  great  point 
with  the  French.  Literature  is  the  medium  in 
which  they  render  their  idea  of  the  gentleman. 
They  have  absolutely  no  mercy  for  the  bull  in  the 
china  shop  on  the  search  for  emphasis. 

With  our  younger  writers  of  the  day,  such 
curiosity  as  there  is  about  the  future  takes  a 
more  rational  turn.  "  In  that  noddle  of  yours," 
says  Arnold  Bennett  to  aspiring  youth,  "  is  every- 
thing necessary  to  development,  for  the  achieving 
of  happiness,  and  you  are  absolutely  lord  over  the 
noddle  will  you  but  exercise  your  powers  of  lord- 
ship, self-control,  in  a  word,  mastery  and  common 
sense."  And  he  goes  on  to  glorify  "  the  intensive 
culture  of  the  reason — habit  forming  by  concentra- 
tion." The  wisdom  of  Marcus  Aurelius  and  of 
Epictetus  is  generally  good  enough  for  him.  Wells 
follows,  or  rather  leads,  very  much  in  the  same 
line — efficiency.  Archer,  who  has  done  so  much 
for  the  innovators,  is  still  our  greatest  sobering 
force.  The  last  still  awaits  the  full  recognition 
he  deserves.  Perhaps  his  '  manner  '  is  his  hindrance 
in  a  self-advertising  age.  It  is  marked  only  by  his 
fervour  for  truth  and  fairplay,  and  by  his  attitude 
of  discipleship  towards  a  whole  order  of  great  ideas 
on  which  assuredly  he  is  the  best  qualified  to  lay 
down  the  law. 

Alas,  how  we  sometimes  play  at  being  alive  ! 
At  a  college  near  Philadelphia,  it  seems,  they 
train  girls  into  "  superwomen,"  by  a  system  which 


THRESHING  OUT  331 

sends  them  out  into  the  air  in  all  weathers — in 
waterproofs  for  the  rainy  days — to  write  their 
exercises.  Poor  little  things,  and  poorer  bigger 
ones  to  follow,  one  can  but  fear.  But  probably 
their  fate,  if  they  are  not  called  to  repentance 
by  a  timely  cold,  may  prove  the  best  corrective  of 
all.  Superman  is  but  a  figure  for  the  Fifth  of 
November  in  our  streets — stuffed  with  rubbish 
by  the  nature  of  his  being.  Those  of  higher  faculty 
owe  infinite  help  and  even  deference  to  those  of 
lower.  The  strong  man  rules — himself,  and  serves 
the  others.  While  the  effigy  holds  its  place  as  a 
god  in  Germany,  Germany  must  be  on  its  way  to 
the  abyss.  She  was  once  re-made  by  a  literature 
of  the  right  sort ;  she  is  going  to  be  unmade  by  a 
literature  of  the  wrong.  May  all  of  us  be  saved 
from  too  striking  a  victory,  lest  we  run  the  same 
course. 

A  fateful  course  it  is,  a  veritable  Fortune's  wheel. 
The  sufferings  of  a  people  beget  its  virtues  ;  its 
virtues  beget  its  faculty  ;  its  faculty,  its  arrogance  ; 
its  arrogance,  its  decay.  All  history,  Jew  and 
Gentile,  tells  the  same  tale — our  own  is  no  ex- 
ception. Is  there  no  way  of  lashing  down  the 
wheel  at  power  wisely  won  and  wisely  used  ?  The 
whole  problem  of  life  is  there.  Efficiency  is  too 
narrowly  construed,  even  by  the  best  of  us. 
Bennett's  "  noddle  "  is  but  its  journeyman  ;  the 
soul  must  still  be  master  from  first  to  last.  By 
all  means  learn  the  job  of  your  workshop,  what- 
ever it  may  be,  founding  a  science,  or  cooking  a 
beefsteak.  But  your  head  and  your  hands  are  not 
enough  ;  the  true  source  and  sustainer  of  all  the 


332  MY  HARVEST 

powers  must  still  be  the  heart.  I  ask  for  more, 
and  ever  more,  of  that  in  the  current  energies  of 
the  day. 

I  wrote  John  Street  in  the  hope  of  giving  this 
organ  a  lift  to  its  place,  within  the  measure  of 
my  powers.  I  began  it  on  quite  a  different  scheme, 
but  much  of  it  was  so  obliging  as  to  write  itself  as 
I  went  on.  It  was  all  I  could  do ;  the  best  of  us 
can  say  no  more. 


THE    END 


INDEX 


About,  85,  143 

Adam,  Madame,  140-6,  v.  Lamber 
Alabama  Arbitration,  93-8 
Alfonso  of  Spain,  113,  116,  120, 

121,  122 

Amateur  casual,  56 
America,  art,  208 

—  Centennial  Exhibition,  206 

—  cities,  local  independence  of, 

127 

—  Copyright,  209 

—  democracy,  217-219 

—  Gladstone  on,  98-107 

—  Literature,  old  and  new,  206, 

207,  216,  217 

—  Rip  Van  Winkle,   the  new, 

216 

—  settlers  in  Paris,  207,  208 

—  typical  American  of  future, 

219,  220 

—  W.  H.  EL,  209-216 

—  Wickedest  Man  in,  71 
Anarchy,  philosophic,  49-51 

—  in  Spain,  111 

Anglo-French  Exhibition,  46,  53 
Anonymity  of  Press,  66 
Apprenticeship,  arts  and  crafts, 

27 

Archer,  William,  330 
Art,  American,  208 
art  dealers,  34 

—  British,  teaching  schools,  31- 

34 

—  French,  academic  and  other, 

238-242 


Art,  Italian,  Cubists,  etc.,  325 

—  Russian  Court  painter,  191 
battle  painter,  158-170 

Balzac,  136 

Barrie,  2,  270 

Bastien  Lepage,  143,  248 

Batignolles,  the,  89 

Bennett,  Arnold,  330,  331 

Bertillon  system,  229,  230 

Besant,  Annie,  304-12 

—  Walter,  305 
Birmingham,  125,  126 
Bismarck,  145,  180-182 
Black,  William,  62,  63,  67,  71, 

72,  290,  291 
Blanc,  Louis,  142 
Blavatski,    Madame,    306,    307, 

308,  310 

Blowitz,  137,  140 
Bohemia  of  the  Press,  67-72 
Bookshops,  secondhand,  42,  43 
Bouguereau,  238 
Bow  Church,  Cheapside,  8 

Mile  End,  8 

Bowes,  Hely,  140 

Bradlaugh,  305,  306,  309 

Brand,  Ibsen's,  319 

Brandes,  185 

Brazza,  African  explorer,  250-3 

Bright,  John,  54,  293 

Bromley-by-Bow,  palace  of,   5, 

6,  15 

Brontes,  the,  259,  260 
Brown,  Madox,  41 


333 


334 


INDEX 


Brownell,  211,  217 
Browning,  Robert,  255,  260-3 
Brownings,  the,  and  Furnivall, 

39,  and  v.  Corkrans,  260-2 
Bxirckhardt,  185 
Butler,  Samuel   {Erewhon),  34, 

295 

Cabanel,  238 

Campbell  Clarke,  138,  140 

Carlos,  Don,  111-113 

Carlyle,  255,  259,  318 

Carpenter,  Edward,  187,  255-7 

Cartagena,  Naval  mutiny,  111 

Castelar,  108,  109,  112,  113,  119 

Cavaignac  and  the  Reds,  21 

Chamberlain,  125,  126 

Chartists  at  Kennington  Com- 
mon, 11 

Chaucer  and  Stratford  -  atte- 
Bowe,  7,  8 

Cheshire  Cheese  Tavern,  274 

Chesterton,  G.  K.,  300 

Chinese  Giant,  78-81 

Clemenceau,  224,  225 

Clubs — English  :  Bohemian,  67, 
68 

Fireside,  289 

National  Liberal,  294 

Omar  Khayyam,  294 

Reform,  290-3 

Savage,  68,  288,  290 

Whitefriars,  288 

—  French,  "  Mirlitons,"  295 

Union,  296 

Cockburn,  Sir  Alexander,  94-97 

Coins  and  medals,  26 

Commune,  49,  50,  111,  306 

Coningsby,  Robert,  54-8,  67 

Conscription,  113,  328 

Cook,  Captain,  fate  of  his  ship,  3 

Cook,  Sir  E.  T.,  277 

Coppee,  152 

Coquelin,  the  Elder,  283 


Corkrana,  the,  135,  136,  260-2, 

266 

Corot,  132 
Correspondents,  our  own,   135- 

140,  158 
Costermonger    articles,    57,    58, 

66,  67 

Courbet,  238 

Coventry  Patmore,  298,  299 
Crawfords,  the,  138,  140 
Crimean  war,  24,  25 
Cruickshank  reformed,  264,  265 
Cubists,  325 
Cushing,  Caleb,  94-8 

Daily  Mail,  74 
Daily  News,  137-40,  271-85 
Daily  Telegraph,  73,  74,  137,  138 
Daudet,  Alphonse,  199 
Davidson,  poet  and  journalist, 

278,  279 
Degas,  48,  238 

Dickens,  Charles,  72,  73,  260,  270 
Didon,  Pere,  246 
Disraeli,  98,  99 
Dor6,  Gustave,  239-42 
Dostoieffsky,  175,  202 
Dublin,  127 

Dumas,  the  Younger,  85 
Dundonald,  Lord,  20 

Edinburgh,    as   a   capital,    126, 

127 

Editor,  passing  of  the,  275 
Eichhorn,  176 

Empire,  Second  French,  76,  77 
Ems  telegram,  181,  182 
Erewhon  dinner,  295 
"  Ernestine,  La  Belle,"  88 
Eug6nie,  Empress,  85 
Evans,  Dr.,  87 
Exhibitions,   Anglo-French,    46, 

03 
—  Centennial,  U.S.A.,  206 


INDEX 


335 


Exhibition,  Paris,  1867,  76-92 

—  Verestchagin's,  167-9 

Fabian  Society,  310,  311 
Faiths,  City  Temple  and  West- 
minster Abbey,  312 

—  Second  Adventists,  313-16 
-  Theosophy,  304-12 

Father,  my,  1,  14,  24,  44,  74 
Ferry,  Jules,  223 
Feuillet,  Octave,  85,  86,  199 
Figueras,  108,  114,  120 
Fireside  Club,  289 
Flaubert,  85,  143,  327 
Forbes,  Archibald,  281,  282 
France,  Anatole,  129,  275,  329, 

330 
France,  art,  238-42 

—  literature,  some  schools,  242, 

243 

—  local  independence,  129 

—  orators,  pulpit,  246-9 

—  passim,    ch.    iv.,    vi.,    x-xii., 

xvi.,  xvii.,  xx.,  xxi. 
Freycinet,  143 
Freytag,  175 
Furnivall   and    the    Brownings, 

39,  40 

—  at    Working    Men's    College, 

36-8 

—  sculling  club  for  girls,  38,  39 
Futurists,  325 

Galliffet,  General,  143 
Gambetta,  139,  141-3,  157,  222, 

225,  226 

Geneva  Arbitration,  92-8 
German  workmen,  27,  30 
Germany,  the  new,  171-5 
Gervinus,  178 
Giesebrecht,  179 
Girardin,  88,  142,  143 
Gladstone,  98-107,  293 
Glasgow  art,  124,  125 


Goethe,  321 

Gooch,  History  and  Historians, 

175 

Gorki,  159,  200 
Greenwood,  James,  56 
Grimms,  the,  176 
Guyot,  Yves,  48 

Hardie,  Keir,  328 
Harris,  Joel  C.,  216 
-  Lake,  211 
Harrison,  Frederic,  41 
Hawarden  Castle,  99,  100,  101 
Her  Majesty's  Seals,  24 
Hermitage  Picture  Gallery,  189 
Hill,  Frank,  271,  272 
History  of  Our  Own  Times,  61,  62 
History,  Prussianized,  175,  180- 

186 

Howard,  Mr.,  21-3 
Hughes,  "  Tom,"  36 
Hugo,  V.,  136 

funeral,  154 

grandchildren,  148-51 

grandfather,  art  of  being, 

149-50 

king  uncrowned,  147 

Madame,  154 

return  to  Paris,  151 

salon  in  Paris,  151-4 

Wagner's  lampoon  on,  155 

-  will,  155 

Hurlbert,  W.  H.,  98,  99 
Huxley,  41 
Hyacinthe,  Pere,  246-9 

Ibsen,  175,  318,  319,  321 

Interviewing,  97-107 

Irish    Exhibition    at    Olympia, 

62 

Irving,  Henry,  64 
Isabella  of  Spain,  108,  113,  115, 

118,  122 


336 


INDEX 


James,  Henry,  209,  268,  269 

—  King,  palace  at  Bromley,  6, 

15 

—  William,  217 
Jefferson  Davis,  100,  104 
Journalism  and  capital,  285-7 
Journalism  old  and  new,  271-87 

Karr,  Alphonse,  88 
Kingsley,  Charles,  40 
Kipling,  269,  328 
Kremlin,  Moscow,  203,  204 

"  Labby,"  293,  294 
Lake  Harris,  211 
Lamartine,  136 

Lamber,  Juliette,  140,  v.  Adam 
Lang,  Andrew,  273-5,  281 
Leconte  de  Lisle,  143,  152 
Lefebvre,  the  painter,  238 
Legitimists,  Spanish,  111 
Leigh's  School  of  Art,  31-4 
Leo,  German  historian,  178 
Lesseps,  143,  231-233 
Library,  Imperial  Russian,  192 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  chambers, 

74 

Liverpool,  125,  130 
Lockroy,  Madame,  152 
London,  return  to,  268,  271 

—  tyranny  of,  123,  124,  126,  127, 

129,  130 

Ludlow  at  Working  Men's  Col- 
lege, 36 

McCarthys,  the,  59-65,  93 
Macdonald,  Ramsay,  328 
MacMahon's    "  16th    of    May," 

141,  142 
Madrid,  108-10 
Makart,  Austrian  painter,  166 
Manchester  art  dealers,  34 
Manchester  Guardian,  123,  135 


Manchester,  my  stay  in,  123-5, 

129-134 
Manet,  238 
Marks,  of  Working  Men's  College, 

41,  42 

Marston,  the  actor,  67 
Martin  (v.  Maconochie),  54 
Masefield's   Pompey  the  Great, 

275 

Mathilde,  Princesse,  85 
Maupassant,  327 
Maurice,  J.  D.,  at  W.M.C.,  35, 

36,  41 
Maurras,  for  Church  and  King, 

246 

Maximilian,  Emperor,  77,  91 
Max  O'Rell,  289 
Mechanics'  Institutes,  36 
Medals  and  coins,  26 
Meissonier,  160,  238 
Mercedes,  Queen  of  Spain,  115 
Metternich,  Princess,  86 
Meurice,  Paul,  152 
Meynells,  the,  298-303 
Michel,  Louise,  226-8 
Millet,  the  painter,  132 
"Mirlitons"  Club,  295 
Moltke,  169 
Monsabre,  Pere,  246 
Montpensier,  intrigues  in  Spain, 

115 

Morley,  John,  editor  of  Star,  93 
Moscow,  203,  204 
Munkacsy,  painter,  241 
Music-hall  stars,  271 
Music,  modern,  327 

Napoleon  III,  21,  49,  91,  92 
Nash's  London,  20 
National  Liberal  Club,  294 
Niebuhr,  175-177 
Nietzsche,  184-6,  319 
Night  in  a  workhouse,  56 
—  in  Belgrave  Square,  57 


INDEX 


337 


No.  5  John  Street,  52,  287,  332 
Norfolk  Street,  Strand,  2 
Nouvelle  Revue,  La,  143 
Novikoff,  Madame  de,  197,  198 

Oliphant,  Laurence,  211,  212 
Ouida,  83-5,  208 

Palmer,  Roundell,  Sir,  94,  95 
Palmerston,  defence  of  Canada, 
93,  317 

—  and  Spanish  marriages,  115 

—  and    the    Tiverton    butcher, 

317,  318 

Panama  scandal,  230-4 
Panslavist  movement,  Moscow, 

204 
Paris,  exhibition  of  1887,  76-92 

—  first  visit,  46 

—  settlement  in,  134 
Parkinson,  J.,  291-293 
Parnellism  and  Crime,  65 
Paul,  Herbert,  272-273,  276 
Payn,  James,  290,  291 
Peer  Gynt,  319 

Peter  the  Great,  188,  193 
Petroleuses,  90 
Phil  May,  280 
Picture  dealers,  130-134 
Pistrucci,  medallist,  25 
Polytechnics,  modern,  37 
Pourtales,  Madame  de,  87 
Pre-Raphaelism,  32 
Press,  anonymity  of,  66 

—  Bohemia  of  the,  67-72 

—  correspondence,  old  and  new, 

135-140 

—  night  work  on  the,  279-281 

—  prentice  work  for,  52-58 
Prim,  Marshal,  108 
Prisons  for  debtors,  68-70 
Proudhon  on  women,  144 

'  Prue  '  Meynell,  302,  303 
Prussia,  King  of,  in  Paris,  77,  88 


Prussianizing  historians,  180-186 

Dahlmann,  180 

Droysen,  180 

Duncker,  180 

-  Sybel,  179,  180-182 
-Treitschke,  179,  182-184 

Pugilists,  old  and  new,  270-271 

Pyrenees,  crossing  by  diligence, 
114 

Queretaro,  tragedy  of,  77 

Raeburn,  132 

Ranke,  177,  178 

Rapson,  Professor,  289 

Rattazzi,  Madame,  87 

Ravachol,  228-230 

Reade,  Charles,  268 

Reclus,  Elie,  48,  49,  51,  52 

Reclus,  Elisee,  48-51 

Reform  Club,  72,  290-3 

Renan,  86,  152 

Repnin,  Russian  painter,  159 

Republic  in  Spain,  109-112 

Reuter  on  sentiment  and  busi- 
ness, 284,  285 

Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  143 

Revue,  La  Nouvelle,  143 

Robertson,  Forbes,  as  art  stu- 
dent, 34 

Robinson,  Sir  J.,  281-285,  290 

Rochefort,  225-226 

Rodin,  239 

Rome,  my  journey  to,  205 

Rossetti,  Dante  G.,  41 

Rothschild,  87 

Rouvier  and  French  finance, 
223-224 

—  Madame,  "Claude  Vignon," 
224 

Roze,  Marie,  88 

Ruskin,  36,  255,  259 

Russell,  Sir  Edward,  64 

Russia,  Boyar  type,  193-195 


338 


INDEX 


Russia,  Court  painter,  191 

—  Gorki  in  exile,  200 

—  later  writers,  203 

—  Moscow,  Kremlin  of,  203-204 

—  Novikoff,  Mde.  de,  197-198 

—  salon,  Russian,  a,  195 

—  Tolstoy,  later  work,  201 

—  Turguenieff,  vide  339 

—  woman  of  culture,  a,  196,  197 

Sainte-Beuve,  86 

St.  John's  Wood,  17,  19 

Sala,  72,  73 

Salons,  297-303 

—  Adam,  Madame,  140-143 

—  Corkran,  the,  136 

—  English  modern,  297 

—  French  old,  297 

—  Meynell,  the,  298-301 

—  Russian,  195 
Sargent,  166,  208 
Savage  Club,  68,  288-290 
Say,  Leon,  143 
Schneider,  88 

Schuyler,  Eugene,  188,  205 

—  Montgomery,  211 

Science  and  art  department,  30, 

31 

Seeley,  Professor,  41 
Semitism,  anti-,  183 
Senior,  W.,  276 
Seven  Stars  Inn,  Bromley,  7 
Shakespeare,  Shaw  on,  320-322 
Shaw,  Bernard,  200,  320-324 
Simon,  Jules,  48,  223 
Skobeleff,  145 
Snowden,  Philip,  328 
Sorbonne,  the,  223 
Spain,  Alfonso,  King  of,  113 

—  Amadeus,  King  of,  108,  120 

—  anarchist,  111 

—  Barcelona  insurrection,   114 

—  Cortes,  debate  in  the,  110 

—  Figueras  and  the  Reds,  114 


Spain,  Isabella  dethroned,  108 

—  Isabella  and  her  dwarf,  118- 

122 

—  old  and  new,  110,  113 

—  opera  in  war  time,  110 
-Republic  in,  108-112,  122 

—  Santa  Cruz,  mad  cure  of,  112 

—  Serrano,  Marshal,  112 

—  "  Spanish      Marriages  "      in- 

trigue, 115 

—  state  of  siege,  113 

—  students,  University,  109 
Spielhagen,  175 
Sponging  houses,  68 
Sprouts,  Mr.,  his  Opinions,  67 
Spy  system  in  France,  234-237 
Standard,  The,  Paris  office,  137, 

140 

Stanley  and  his  rival,  250-253 

Star,  The,  56,  64,  93 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  268 

Stratford-atte-Bowe  of  Chaucer, 
8 

Sudermann's  Magda  and  Tenny- 
son's Guinevere,  258 

Superman,  184,  185,  318,  331 

Superwoman,  330 

Swinburne  and  Watts-Dunton, 
265,  267 

Syndicalism,  327 

Taine,  85 

Talmage,  De  Witt,  211 

Taylor,  John  Edward,  art  sale, 

132 

Tennyson,  255,  257-259 
Thackeray  in  Paris,  136 
Theresa,  Paris  singer,  88,  243- 

245 

Thomson,  Francis,  299,  300,  303 
Times,  The,  Paris  correspondent, 

138-140 

Tolstoy,  175,  195,  201 
Treitschke,  179 


INDEX 


339 


Tribune,  New  York,  108 
Trochu,   General,   and   Wagner, 

156 
Troitska    Monastery,    treasures 

of,  204 
Truth,    Paris   correspondent   of, 

139 

Tsar  in  Paris,  88 
Turguenieff,  143,  159,  175,  198, 

199,  202 
Tyndall,  Professor,  41 

Uhrich,  General,  146 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  18 
Union  Club,  Paris,  296 

Verestchagin,  158-170,  199 

—  battle  pictures — Asia,  Central, 

160,  164 

British  India,  160 

Russo-Turkish,  161 

—  character  and  aims,  159,  162 

—  Court   favour,    loss    of,    161, 

162 

—  Exhibition  at  Berlin,  167-169 

—  peasant  servant,  163 

—  studio  in  France,  158,  162 

—  temper    and    quarrels,     164, 

169 

—  untimely  end,  170 
Victorian  era,  5,  254-260 
Vienna,  165-167 

"  Vignon,  Claude  " — Mde.   Rou- 

vier,  224 
Vigny,  Alfred  de,  136 


Wagner,  155-157,  184,  321 
Wallace,  A.  R.,  on  his  own  time, 

255 

Ward,  Genevieve,  124 
Watt,  A.  P.,  as  literary  agent,  270 
Watts  -  Dunton     as     friend     of 

Genius,  263-267 
Wellington  and  the  Chartists,  12 
Wells,  H.  G.,  270,  330 
Wharton,  Edith,  208 
W.  H.  H.,  209-216 

—  influence  on  women,  212-213 

—  trial,  a  famous,  214 
Whistler,  J.,  267 
Whitefriars  Club,  289 
Whitehouse,    F.,    of    The   Daily 

Telegraph,  88 

Wickedest  Man  in  America,  71 
Wilberforce,  Archdeacon,  312, 313 
Wilson,  E.  D.  J.,  of  The  Times, 

64-66,  276 

Working-class  Exhibition,  Anglo- 
French,  46,  53 

Working  Men's  College,  35-43 
World,  The,  New  York,  94,  158, 

209,  210 

Wright,  Hagberg,  200 
Wyon,  Benjamin,  medallist,  24,27 

—  William,  R.  A.,  medallist,  25 

Zangwill,  on  America  as  melt- 
ing-pot, 219,  220 

Zichy,  Count,  Russian  Court 
painter,  191 

Zola,  influence  on  Germany,  174 


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